OREM — The Utah Valley University baseball program has made strong strides in recent years and continued that trend Monday after officially receiving a bid to the NCAA Tournament.
The bid was guaranteed after the Wolverines (37-21) captured the WAC baseball championship with a 4-0 win over Seattle last Saturday, the first conference championship ever for the program.
"We've been waiting for this day for a long time. Two years ago we got here and didn't win it," said senior Craig Brinkerhoff after the win over Seattle. "From day one this year we had our goal set on the dogpile. It was a great team effort."
The Wolverines also saw good success outside of WAC Conference play during the 2016 season. Perhaps most notably were three wins over Utah in all three games played. The Utes went on to win the Pac-12 Conference championship and also received a bid to the NCAA regional round.
Getting into the tournament is one thing, but advancing is another challenge altogether, and UVU will have its work cut out in the Baton Rouge Regional with the host being nationally No. 8-ranked LSU (42-18.) The Wolverines enter the four-team regional as the No. 4 seed and will square off with the Tigers this Friday at 2 p.m. CDT/1 p.m. MDT from Alex Box Stadium in Baton Rouge.
The other half of the regional features No. 2 Rice (35-22) against No. 3 Southeastern Louisiana (39-19) on Friday at 7 p.m. CDT in the double-elimination tournament. The winners of Friday's games will face off on Saturday at 7 p.m. CDT with the losers facing an elimination game on Saturday at 2 p.m. CDT.
LSU has a long history in the tournamet and this will be the program's 29th NCAA Regional appearance. The Tigers have won six College World Series titles and have made 17 appearances in the College World Series.
Rice, meanwhile, hails from Conference USA and is making its 22nd straight postseason appearance, which is the fourth-longest active streak in the country.
Southeastern Louisiana competes in the Southland Conference and is playing in the Baton Rouge Regional for the second time in the last three seasons.
Utah Valley has never faced any teams from the three conferences in this weekend's regional.
Email: bgurney@desnews.com
Twitter: @BrandonCGurney