ASU baseball to face Ole Miss in Lincoln Regional of NCAA tourney

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TEMPE – Following a loss to West Virginia in the semifinals of the Big 12 Tournament, the Arizona State baseball team quickly shifted its focus to the NCAA Tournament.

Not knowing where they would end up, the Sun Devils scanned various college baseball sites that were offering projections. D1Baseball.com had ASU going to Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Perfect Game projected them to land in Los Angeles.

None of the predictions came true.

After nearly 30 minutes of waiting, Arizona State landed as the No. 3 seed in the Lincoln Regional, hosted by No. 1 seed Nebraska. Joining the Devils will be No. 4 seed South Dakota State and ASU’s first opponent, No. 2 seed Mississippi.

This marks the first stop in the Sun Devils’ ultimate goal to reach Omaha and the College World Series for the first time since 2010.

Not only was the location a shock, so was the seeding.

“I was a little surprised,” Big 12 player of the year Landon Hairston said. “Regardless where we play, it doesn’t really matter. We’re going to have to go through those teams anyways, so I might as well get them done.”

Coming off fifth-year coach Willie Bloomquist’s best season in Tempe, which saw ASU finish 37-19 (19-11 in the Big 12) – the most wins since 2019 – the Sun Devils had high expectations for this selection. But as Hairston noted, the seed is secondary to the job at hand.

With numerous veterans on the team, there are more than a few players who have experienced this moment in years past. Infielder Nu’u Contrades and catcher Brody Briggs remembered how the 2025 season ended in the NCAA Regional round with an 11-6 loss to UC Irvine.

“We need to just play our game,” Briggs said. “I think we’ve played a lot of big-time games this year to help us in this situation.”

ASU ace Cole Carlon acknowledged that “last year, we didn’t get the result that we wanted to. This year, we want to change that. We want to win a regional, win a super regional and get to Omaha.”

Some of those “big-time games” this season were nonconference matchups against five different SEC opponents. While they are not the same as tournament games, everyone on the team understood the importance of the games then and even more now, facing off against another SEC team in the first round.

“All those teams are playing in a regional,” Carlon said. “It’s kind of early, early exposure to what the postseason is going to be like.”

While Bloomquist has not announced a starting pitcher for the game, it is likely to be Carlon. He is coming off a short outing at the end of the regular season in which he tossed 1.2 innings against Houston, and a strong outing against West Virginia in the Big 12 Tournament in which he threw 5 1/3 innings, allowing one run on five hits with one walk and six strikeouts.

Ole Miss (36-21, 15-15 SEC) enters the tournament coming off a 10-8 loss to Missouri in the first round of the SEC Tournament.

ASU will take on the Rebels at 6 p.m. Friday on ESPN2.