NAIA Baseball Opening Round Qualifiers and Parings Announced

Baseball | Thu, May 13, 2021 at 6:05 PM

NAIA Opening Round Qualifiers | Opening Round Schedule

BOWLING GREEN, Ky. – Cumberlands (Ky.) and Freed-Hardeman (Tenn.) qualified for the NAIA Baseball Championship Opening Round, the national office announced Thursday.

The opening round of the national tournament begins on Monday, May 17 at nine host sites across the NAIA and the five-team, double-elimination brackets are slated to be finished on Thursday, May 20.

Cumberlands is the No. 1 seed in the Williamsburg (Ky.) bracket and earned one of the Mid-South Conference’s automatic bids. The Tigers will face the winner of fourth-seeded Point Park (Pa.) and No. 5 seed Mayville State (N.D.).  Second-seeded LSU Shreveport (La.) will take on third-seeded Reinhardt.

Freed-Hardeman (Tenn.) earned the conference’s second automatic  bid and is the No. 4 seed in the Montgomery, Alabama bracket. The Lions open up bracket play against fifth-seeded Our Lady of the Lake. The winner of the matchup will face top-seeded Vanguard (Calif.). Faulkner (Ala.) is the No. 2 seed in the bracket and will face third-seeded St. Thomas (Fla.).

The field consists of 30 automatic qualifiers – given to conference regular-season champions, tournament champions or tournament runners-up – and 15 at-large teams. Conferences with 10-or-more members receive two automatic qualifiers, while leagues with less than 10 get one.

The nine opening round champions join Lewis-Clark State (Idaho) at the 64th annual Avista NAIA Baseball World Series in Lewiston, Idaho, May 28 – June 4.

Opening round action begins at the 10 host sites on May 17.