Seeding Has Northridge Taking the Fifth

The whoops and hollers never materialized. Instead, stunned, sullen silence hung over the restaurant filled with anxious Cal State Northridge baseball players Monday after NCAA regional pairings were announced on ESPN.

The Matadors knew they were going to a regional; they figured they’d be sent to Stanford, but they didn’t know if they’d be seeded second or third.

Try fifth.

Northridge (49-16), second in the nation in victories and ranked No. 10 by Baseball America, will face second-seeded Stanford, No. 6 in the nation and the West Regional host, in a first-round game Thursday at 7 p.m. Thirty-two teams in the eight regionals are seeded higher than the Matadors.

“No respect,” said first baseman Grant Hohman, one of the few Matadors to say anything before leaving for practice.

The Matadors’ arduous road to an automatic berth did not appear to impress the tournament committee. Northridge won the Western Athletic Conference Western Division, the overall WAC championship in a best-of-three series against Brigham Young and a best-of-three series against West Coast Conference champion Santa Clara.

Seeded higher than Northridge are Long Beach State, which Northridge defeated twice, and UC Santa Barbara, which finished fourth in the Big West tournament. Fresno State, which the Matadors defeated for the WAC Western title, also is seeded fifth.

UCSB (32-18), seeded No. 4 at Stanford (39-17), will face third-seeded Mississippi State (37-22) Thursday at 3 p.m. No. 1-seeded Florida State (47-15) will play sixth-seeded Northeastern Illinois (31-27) at 11 a.m.

“It looks like the toughest regional,” Northridge Coach Mike Batesole said. “The one thing you don’t want to have to do is play the host team. But you have to do it eventually in order to win the regional, so we might as well [play Stanford] right off the bat.”

Stanford has won 16 games in a row and, like Northridge, is led by an All-American candidate at catcher. A.J. Hinch of Stanford is batting .397 with 11 homers and 55 runs batted in; Robert Fick of Northridge is batting .420 with 24 home runs and 88 RBIs.

USC (41-14-1), ranked No. 1 by Baseball America, is seeded No. 1 in the Central II Regional at Texas Tech in Lubbock. The Trojans open against Akron (37-21). Fresno State (39-22) is seeded No. 4 in the same regional and will face Texas Tech (47-13).

“We feel pretty good about the way we’ve been playing recently,” USC Coach Mike Gillespie said. “There haven’t been a lot of fireworks, but we’ve pitched well and gotten a lot of hits.”

Long Beach State (34-24), the Big West Conference champion, is seeded No. 2 in the Central I Regional and will play Southwest Missouri State (30-23) in the first round at Texas. Fourth-seeded UCLA (33-26) will play Texas (38-22).

Defending national champion Cal State Fullerton (43-14), seeded No. 2 in the Midwest Regional at Wichita State, will open against Delaware (44-10).

Northridge’s low seeding surprised more than just the Matadors.

“On the playing field, they are much better than a No. 5,” Long Beach Coach Dave Snow said. “For me, that was the biggest surprise of the draw.”

Nine teams from the West--eight from California and UNLV--were selected compared to only seven last year.

“They spread out the teams from the West, so we have the opportunity to get out of the regionals,” Snow said. “In the past they would throw them all in the West Regional.”

Staff writer George Dohrmann contributed to this story.