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FAYETTEVILLE — As expected, Arkansas was announced as the No. 1 overall seed for the 2021 NCAA Tournament on Monday.
The Razorbacks will host a double-elimination regional beginning Friday, with Nebraska, Northeastern and NJIT being the other teams headed to the Fayetteville Regional.
Although 14 of the previous 21 top-seeded teams made it to Omaha, Arkansas is trying to become just the second to win the national championship. The only No. 1 seed to win it all was Miami (Fla.) in 1999, the first year of the tournament’s current format.
It is the third straight year the Razorbacks have earned a top-eight seed, something just 10 other programs have accomplished under the current format. Only two of those teams – Rice and Florida – won a national title during their stretch of top-eight seeds.
The 2 seed in the Fayetteville Regional is Nebraska, which went 31-12 against an all-Big Ten schedule and earned an automatic bid by winning the conference. The Cornhuskers are led by Will Bolt, who was a member of Arkansas coach Dave Van Horn’s first recruiting class at Nebraska.
Northeastern is the 3 seed, earning an automatic bid by winning the CAA Tournament. The Huskies went 36-10 and also won the Colonial’s regular-season title with a 20-3 mark in conference play.
The first team Arkansas will face in the postseason is NJIT, which is the 4 seed. The Highlanders went 26-22 and secured the America East’s automatic bid by winning the conference tournament.
The regional will start with the Arkansas-NJIT matchup at 2 p.m. CT Friday, followed by the Nebraska-Northeastern matchup at 7 p.m. CT. Both games will be streamed on ESPN3.
The Fayetteville Regional is paired with the Ruston Regional, which features No. 16 overall seed Louisiana Tech, as well as North Carolina State, Alabama and Rider. If Arkansas wins its regional, it would then host the winner of that regional in a best-of-three super regional with a spot in the College World Series on the line.