NCAA Baseball Tournament 2016 scores and bracket: National seeds survive on Day 1

The opening day of the 2016 NCAA Baseball Tournament is in the books, and all eight national seeds have made it through to the winners’ sides of their respective brackets. No. 1 overall seed Florida easily handled Bethune-Cookman, 9-3, while No. 5 overall seed Texas Tech blasted Fairfield, 12-1. Not all the national seeds had it so easy, however.

Miami was knotted 2-2 with Stetson in the eighth inning in Coral Gables, but two late runs pushed the Hurricanes past their opening foe. Clemson was down by as many as six runs in the top of the third, until 10 Tiger runs in the bottom of that inning turned things around in favor of the ACC champs, who eventually manhandled Western Carolina, 24-10. TWENTY-FOUR TO TEN, NOT A FOOTBALL SCORE.

Mississippi State’s Dakota Hudson—a likely first-round pick in this month’s MLB Draft—got burned bad in just 3⅓ innings of work against Southeast Missouri State, giving up four hits and four earned runs. He also allowed four walks on just two strikeouts against the 18 batters he faced. But the Bulldogs pulled themselves together to put the hammer down on SEMO for a 9-5 win.

Things didn’t go so well for another couple of SEC teams that came close to grabbing national seeds. Ole Miss went down in extra innings to Utah, probably the best four-seed in the tournament, while South Carolina coughed up a game to four-seed Rhode Island.

Four hours into its game against Washington, UC Santa Barbara was locked in a 2-2 extra-inning marathon. UCSB had already hauled itself off the mat once, hitting a clutch solo homer in the bottom of the 12th after the Huskies had taken a 2-1 lead in the top of the frame. In the 14th inning, up stepped Bush, a 6’6, 265-pound freshman:

Offsetting the excitement of winning a 14-inning game, however, is the strain it puts on the bullpen. UCSB, which will have to fight through Vanderbilt’s absurdly deep staff, used another three arms after starter Shane Bieber gave them 7⅓ innings.

UCSB will have to wait for the ‘Dores to play their opener against Xavier, a game that was postponed to Saturday by rain.

Earlier in the day, it looked like Vandy would postpone the game for another reason: the death of 19-year-old freshman pitcher Donny Everett. The school confirmed on Friday morning that Everett, who’d seen his role increase steadily after sitting out the first half of the season with an injury, drowned the previous night while swimming in a lake about an hour southeast of Nashville.

The NCAA offered to let the host team postpone the game, but the Vandy players and coaches opted to play.

“They decided to go ahead and play to honor the young man,” NCAA site representative Bob Jones told The Tennessean. “They could have delayed it a day. I talked to the other three coaches, and they were all on board with whatever would be best (for Vanderbilt). They had heartfelt sympathies for the Vanderbilt family.”

The Buckeyes have been on fire of late, winning 13 of their last 16 regular season games before running through the Big 10 Tourney to grab the conference title. Down 6-5 entering the bottom of the ninth against Wright State, that momentum looked like it’d be broken up by a trip to the losers bracket. But OSU was able to tie it up before loading the bases for Jalen Washington ...

Now OSU gets a chance to keep its hot streak going against Louisville on Saturday. Good luck with that.

LSU 7, Utah Valley 1

Virginia 17, William & Mary 4

East Carolina 9, Bryant 1

Oklahoma State 6, Nebraska 0

Clemson 24, Western Carolina 10

Wake Forest 5, Minnesota 3

Texas A&M 4, Binghamton 2

UNC-Wilmington 11, Duke 1

Rhode Island 5, South Carolina 4

Long Beach State 5, Florida Atlantic 1

Miami 4, Stetson 2

Gonzaga 5, Arizona State 1

TCU 7, Oral Roberts 0

UConn 7, Georgia Tech 6

Florida 9, Bethune-Cookman 3

Arizona 7, Sam Houston State 3

Louisiana-Lafayette 5, Princeton 3

Ohio State 7, Wright State 6

Louisville 6, Western Michigan 1

Texas Tech 12, Fairfield 1

New Mexico 12, Dallas Baptist 6

UC Santa Barbara 3, Washington 2 (14 innings)

Boston College 7, Tulane 2

Utah 6, Ole Miss 5

Coastal Carolina 5, St. Mary’s 2

NC State 13, Navy 8

Mississippi State 9, Southeast Missouri State 5

Southern Miss 14, South Alabama 2

Florida State 18, Alabama State 6