Baseball America: CCU's national baseball championship chase could begin in Conway

With three weeks of games and conference tournaments yet to come, it’s way too early to know which teams will make the NCAA baseball tournament field of 64, and where those teams will play their regionals

But it’s not too early to predict, and Baseball America currently projects Coastal Carolina, which is ranked 15th nationally by the publication, to host one of 16 NCAA regionals based on the season through this past weekend.

Baseball America writers Teddy Cahill and Michael Lananna project the field of 64 and 16 regional hosts.

The article has CCU hosting at Springs Brooks Stadium as a top seed with No. 2 Connecticut (25-13-1), No. 3 Missouri (30-15) and No. 4 UNC Greensboro (31-11, 12-3), which it has earning the Southern Conference’s automatic bid. Baseball America has CCU earning the automatic bid from the Sun Belt Conference.

Other projected hosts in the region include Clemson, North Carolina, Duke, N.C. State and Georgia, so if the Chants falter any or fail to win the conference tournament, they could end up at one of those locations.

The Chanticleers have hosted three previous NCAA regionals in 2007, 2008 and 2010. They advanced to a Super Regional in both 2008 and 2010 and hosted the 2010 Super Regional at Pelicans Ballpark in Myrtle Beach, losing two late leads and dropping a pair of one-run games – 4-3 and 10-9 – to eventual national champion South Carolina.

The Chants are 31-14 and continue to run roughshod through the respectable Sun Belt Conference.

They have now won five straight games, have won all seven three-game weekend conference series this season and 11 straight going back to last season to improve to 14-2-1 in series over its two years in the conference. They are an incredible 28-4 over their past 32 Sun Belt games, and have a 3.5-game lead over South Alabama in the conference’s East Division at 17-4.

Those impressive marks will be tested over the next two weekends, as the Chants take on the top two teams in the West Division. They travel to conference tournament host Louisiana-Lafayette (26-20, 12-9) this weekend. The teams tied last year, each winning one-run games before the final game ended in a 7-7 tie due to the league’s travel curfew rule. Coastal hosts Little Rock (23-19, 12-8) next weekend.

In between, the Chants host No. 5 North Carolina at 6 p.m. next Wednesday, hoping to make the Tar Heels their second national top-10 victim, joining No. 10 Clemson, and close the regular season with a series at Appalachian State from May 17-19.

Coastal is coming off a home sweep of Louisiana-Monroe this past weekend, winning games 14-4, 11-4 and 17-16. Seth Lancaster won the final game, which lasted nearly five hours, with a walk-off two-run homer and went 6-for-10 in the series to break out of a 2-for-24 slump entering the weekend.

He didn’t have the best week for CCU, however. Senior Kevin Woodall Jr., of Georgetown was voted the Sun Belt’s Community Coffee Player of the Week with at least 2 RBI, 2 runs scored, one hit and one walk in all three wins over ULM. He batted .500 (6-fror-12) with nine runs scored, eight RBI, a double, two home runs, five walks, a 1.083 slugging percentage and a .737 on base percentage.

For the season, Woodall ranks third in the NCAA and first in the Sun Belt with 16 home runs, 13th nationally with 53 RBI and 15th nationally with 49 runs scored. Woodall also leads the Sun Belt in total bases (104), ranks fourth in slugging (.575) and eighth in walks (30).

Other CCU players ranked in the top 25 in statistics nationally through the weekend are Lancaster, who is third in walks (46), third in run scored (58) and 25th in home runs (12); Cory Wood, who is 20th in walks (37); and Jason Bilous, who is 25th in fewest hits allowed per nine innings (5.71).

As a team, the Chants are third nationally in walks earned (269), fourth in runs scored (370), runs per game (8.2/game) and doubles (109), seventh in home runs (59), eighth in slugging percentage (.483), 11th in on-base percentage (.406), 25th in hits (444) and 17th in fewest hits allowed per nine innings (7.58).

Each of Coastal Carolina’s next two Friday baseball games have new start times – 7:30 p.m. (ET) at Louisiana this week and 2 p.m. vs. Little Rock next week. Following that game, the Chanticleer Athletic Foundation (CAF) will host its annual Chanticleer Gala, which starts at 6 p.m. at the Myrtle Beach Marriott Resort and Spa Grand Dunes. Registration is at www.TheChanticleerGala.com.

As part of the Chanticleer Gala, fans can bid on a “Fan Experience” for the Coastal-UNC game with the bidding closing at 5 p.m. May 7 at https://qtego.net/qlink/coastal#.

This story was originally published May 2, 2018 at 10:21 PM with the headline "Baseball America: CCU's national baseball championship chase could begin in Conway."