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Every NCAA Baseball Tournament No. 1 overall seed to fail to make it out of the regional round
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Every NCAA Baseball Tournament No. 1 overall seed obviously has the biggest dreams of going to Omaha, since it enters the NCAA Tournament after an incredible regular season.
But sometimes incredible regular seasons to go with conference tournament success just doesn’t translate in the NCAA Tournament, even for those No. 1 overall seeds that fans expect so much out of. Sometimes, those teams don’t get to Omaha, or even the Super Regionals.
Vanderbilt added itself to that unfortunate list on Sunday with a gut-wrenching 5-4 loss to Wright State on its home field at the Nashville Regional. The Commodores were eliminated by the Raiders after piling up 43 victories in 2025. That’s where it all ended though, as RJ Austin flied out to right field with the tying and go-ahead runs in scoring position in the top of the 9th. Vandy had staged a furious rally, scoring 3 runs in the 9th after being down to its last out.
Wright State had lived to fight in another game instead, and Vanderbilt was going home — or, in this case, staying home. Which brings us to that unfortunate list. Vandy became the 4th No. 1 overall seed since the current regional-Super Regional-College World Series format went into effect in 1999 to not make it out of the regional round.
The 2007 Vanderbilt team was the first to go on the list and was joined by Oregon State in 2014 and UCLA in 2015. Now the 2025 Vanderbilt team that had such high expectations going into the NCAA Tournament has joined those 3 clubs. This Vanderbilt team is also the first No. 1 national seed to not even play in the regional final.
The No. 1 overall seed that Vandy carried into this NCAA Tournament has become something of a curse, with last year’s Tennessee team still being the only No. 1 overall seed to win the national championship this century. That’s a lot of years of the No. 1 overall seed falling short, and it happened again on Sunday to Vanderbilt.
Vanderbilt’s dreams of adding a third national title to the championships it won in 2014 and 2019 will have to wait another year. In 2025, it all ended in heartbreak and landed the Commodores on a very short, dubious list.
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
