NCAA Baseball Tournament 2016 scores and bracket: The super regionals are set

It took a day longer than we expected, but the second round of the NCAA Baseball Tournament is set. Three teams -- Coastal Carolina, LSU and South Carolina -- won regional championship games on Tuesday to round out the super regional field.

The first team of the day to advance was Coastal Carolina, which came firing out of a rain postponement to score a major comeback upset over host team NC State. The game picked up with the Chanticleers down 5-3 with one out and the bases loaded in the top of the ninth. An RBI groundout and back-to-back singles pushed four runs across the board and Coastal held on in the bottom of the frame to win 7-5.

They’ll head to a super regional in Baton Rouge, where LSU pulled out its own late comeback against Rice on Tuesday. The Owls got a brilliant start from Willy Amador, who took a two-hit shutout into the sixth inning with his club up 2-0. But Amador, a relief pitcher who’d never gone more than five innings, finally yielded to the Tigers’ explosive offense.

Ace starter Jared Poche came out of the bullpen to hold the Rice bats in check down the stretch for a 5-2 win, making LSU just the second team in SEC history to reach 12 super regionals.

The first to do so? South Carolina just a few hours earlier. The Gamecocks, who were left for dead after losing the opening game of the Columbia Regional to No. 4 seed Rhode Island, battled all the way out of the losers bracket to beat UNC-Wilmington, 10-5, in the deciding game.

With the super regional round set, let’s take a quick run through the matchups.

Since we’ve already discussed these two teams, I’m gonna use this space to power rank similes used by ESPN commentator Lynn Rollins during the LSU broadcast on Tuesday:

The Gators outscored the Seminoles, 17-4, during a three-game regular season sweep (all three were midweek games), so FSU faces a steep uphill climb to pull this out in Gainesville against the tournament’s No. 1 overall seed. How good is this Florida pitching staff? The presumptive No. 1 pick in this week’s MLB Draft, A.J. Puk, isn’t even the ace. The good news for the Noles is that their offense is red hot, scoring 18 runs twice during their sweep of the Tallahassee Regional.

You better believe the Aggies are pumped up about this rematch, which gives them a chance to wash the bitter taste of last year’s Fort Worth Super out of their mouths. Tied 4-4 in the series rubber match, this 16th-inning error sent the Frogs to Omaha:

As good as TCU looked sweeping its regional this past weekend, it’s hard to expect anyone to be able to hang with A&M’s explosive offense right now. The Aggies, who lead the SEC in scoring and piled up 22 runs against Wake Forest on Saturday, have averaged 11.8 runs per game going back to the their conference tournament run in Hoover.

Watch out for OK State, which absolutely blasted its way through the Clemson Regional. The Cowboys beat Nebraska, 6-0, on Friday, dumped national seed Clemson, 12-2, on Saturday, then turned around and beat them again, 9-2, on Sunday. Compare the four combined runs Clemson scored on Oklahoma State to the 39 runs Clemson scored in two games against Western Carolina.

These two ACC clubs avoided each other in the regular season, but find themselves in a surprising face-off after BC swept the Oxford Regional as a No. 3 seed. The Eagles finished eight games behind Miami in the conference standings, but won five their last six ACC series after moving Justin Dunn, who will likely start his weekend by going in the first round of the MLB Draft, from the bullpen to the weekend rotation. Dunn gave up just two runs over seven innings in the regional opener against Tulane and gives BC a very real opportunity to steal an early win against the ‘Canes.

UCSB stepped into the void in Nashville after a heartbroken Vandy team exited early, but it’ll find the going a lot tougher against a Louisville team that’s probably the most complete in the tournament. Ace pitcher/slugger Brendan McKay, who’s among the best two-way players in the country, is the perfect representation of a balanced Cardinal team that ranks top four in the nation in both batting average and ERA.

ECU’s riding high after taking down ACC power Virginia in Charlottesville, its third win over the Cavs this season. Now the Pirates will face the class of the Big 12 and their recently dubbed All-American, Eric Gutierrez.

Getting past Bulldogs ace Dakota Hudson (another likely first-rounder) won’t be easy, but Arizona won’t be phased if it loses Game 1. The Wildcats, the last remaining hope for the scuffling Pac-12, got here by coming out of the Lafayette Regional losers bracket to score consecutive wins over the home team in front of a loud, hostile crowd.