The Sun Devils will get a taste of corn country as they head to the Lincoln Regional.
No. 3 ASU will kick off its 2026 NCAA tournament run against No. 2 Ole Miss on Friday. Host and national No. 13 seed Nebraska will take on South Dakota State to round out the field.
The Sun Devils' first matchup will be against the somewhat shocking No. 2-seeded Ole Miss Rebels, who finished ninth in the always-loaded SEC. Almost all recent projections had ASU as a No. 2 seed before Monday's selection, after the Sun Devils finished the regular season 37-19, good for third in the Big 12.
"I was a little surprised," ASU star outfielder Landon Hairston said per SunDevilSource. "There's thousands of projections out there and I don't think many of them had us in Nebraska ... No matter where we play, we gotta play our game."
Nebraska will host a regional for the first time since 2008 after finishing second in the Big 10 behind top national seed UCLA.
Closing out the field is the champion of the Summit League, the South Dakota State Jackrabbits, who finished 24-31 overall.
ASU did not face any of its Lincoln Regional counterparts during the regular season and avoided all other Big Ten and Summit League opponents.
The Sun Devils went 1-4 against SEC teams in 2026, including losses to Mississippi State, Tennessee and Texas A&M in the Amegy Bank College Baseball Series in February. All three programs made the NCAA Tournament.
In the back end of the season, ASU erased any remaining bubble-team doubts with a series win over Houston and a Big 12 quarterfinal victory over Cincinnati, before West Virginia ended the Sun Devils' Big 12 tournament run with a 7-3 victory on May 22.
In the loss to the Mountaineers, junior left-hander Cole Carlon was replaced with a 3-1 lead and one out in the sixth inning after only 79 pitches, having allowed one run and striking out six to preserve his pitch count.
"Cole gave us an opportunity to win,' head coach Willie Bloomquist said per Sun Devil Athletics. "(He) threw the ball great after we wanted to keep his pitch count around 80 going in today."
The Sun Devil bullpen and then surrendered six unanswered runs and committed three errors in the back half of the game. The offense also shied away in one of its first tastes of postseason baseball, putting up a season low of three hits in the contest.
"We gave them too many outs that were quite honestly unacceptable," Bloomquist said, per Sun Devil Athletics. "We have to make plays behind our staff a little bit better than we did, and we gave them a few extra outs, a few extra bases, and ultimately runs that we couldn't afford to give up offensively. We hit some balls hard, but we have to have a better approach than that."
Against eventual NCAA tournament qualifiers during the regular season, the Sun Devils finished 9-10.
ASU is looking to advance to the super regional round for the first time since 2011.
This story is developing and may be updated.
Edited by Alex Swift, Natalia Jarrett and Pippa Fung.
Reach the reporter at eapache3@asu.edu and follow @EricPachecoasu on X.
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Eric Pacheco is a junior studying sports journalism. This is his second semester with The State Press. He previously served as Editor-in-Chief of the Riverside City College student newspaper Viewpoints.Â
