Why Notre Dame baseball won’t let NCAA Regional snub affect play in tournament

Sometimes it’s just impossible to not wear your emotions on your sleeve. It was that way this week for the Notre Dame Fighting Irish baseball team.

Sunday was a letdown. There is no other way around it. When the NCAA released the 16 teams that would host a Regional during this month’s NCAA Baseball Championship, Notre Dame was not one of them. Shocked is an understatement. The entire college baseball community was befuddled. Bamboozled.

Analysts, commentators and fans of other teams all took to various forms of media to voice their complete bewilderment. How’d a team ranked No. 13 in the latest RPI, one that lived well inside the top 15 in most major national polls all spring, a program that still had a chance to win the regular season ACC title outright (for the second straight year) going into the final weekend series, a team that was one of the last four standing in the conference tournament, not earn the right to host a Regional?

“I could sense that they were disappointed after after Sunday,” Notre Dame head coach Link Jarrett said of his players.

PROMOTION: Sign up for just $1 for your first year at Blue & Gold

Monday, when tournament destinations for all 64 participating teams were revealed, Irish players didn’t feel any better. Their school’s name appeared where they felt it shouldn’t have. There’s always a sense of scorn when things don’t work out the way you feel they should’ve. That goes for anything, especially the sports athletes spend so much time trying — and always failing to some degree — to perfect.

Jarrett can’t let that feeling linger. It’s not like Notre Dame was left out of the tournament entirely. This isn’t a Notre Dame vs. the NCAA men’s lacrosse committee situation. The Irish (35-14) are a No. 2 seed in the Statesboro (Ga.) Regional hosted for the first time ever by Georgia Southern (40-18) of the Sun Belt. Notre Dame faces Texas Tech (37-20) Friday at 2 p.m. ET. The mission is still the same; win that game, then two more without two losses thereafter. That hasn’t changed.

There is not any time to dwell. The Red Raiders are battle-tested in June. They’ve been to the College World Series four times since 2014. Notre Dame has been twice in the history of the program. The Irish are attempting to make it back to Omaha for the first time since 2002. To do so, they’ve got to win three games away from home. At least one of those has to come against a team that has been there, done that. One might have to come against the host school, and another might have to come against Jarrett’s old school — UNC Greensboro (34-28).

Advancing through the NCAA Baseball Championship isn’t easy no matter where you play. No matter who you play.

“You’re going to have to beat good teams, whether that’s on this field, at Georgia Southern, Tennessee, Mississippi State, Omaha, Nebraska — you’re going to have to go play good baseball and beat good teams,” Jarrett said.

Regionals are a whole heck of a lot harder than they already are if you’re playing with added emotion affecting performance. Jarrett doesn’t want that. He’s not going to be thinking about his time in Greensboro if the Spartans end up in the opposite dugout. So when he met his team Monday for the selection show, he did his best to wipe away as many emotions as he could. Are they all gone? No. They probably won’t ever be, unless Notre Dame does the unthinkable and goes on to win the national championship.

“So don’t worry about it,” Jarrett said. “I’m happy. If this news popped up when we started the season, you would take what just happened. Are you happy about it right now? Maybe not. But there’s a lot of teams that would trade with you. And I didn’t want them to walk out of this room feeling anything but proud about where we were.”