Arizona will find out Monday morning which teams it will be grouped with when the NCAA Tournament opens up this week, but Sunday evening the Wildcats learned that Tucson will be one of the regional host sites for the first round of the event.
The NCAA released all 16 host sites Sunday ahead of the release of all 64 teams included in this year's tournament.
Arizona will be one of the 16 top national seeds based on Sunday's announcement, but that was expected after the Wildcats logged their 40th win of the season Saturday night and secured the outright Pac-12 title earlier in the weekend.
D1Baseball currently has Arizona projected as a No. 5 seed overall with Grand Canyon, Maryland and UC Santa Barbara as the projected field for the Tucson Regional. Baseball America has the Wildcats projected as the No. 6 seed with GCU, NC State and Fairfield as the three other teams that would play in the Tucson Regional.
A correct projection by D1Baseball would line up the Wildcats with Oregon in the super regional round while Baseball America's projection would have UA hosting Old Dominion, assuming all the favorites win their regionals.
Arizona has not participated in the postseason since the 2017 season and has not hosted a regional since 2012 when the Wildcats eventually won the National Championship.
UA has hosted a regional 14 times in its history prior to this year.
Head coach Jay Johnson's squad was able to finish the regular season 40-15 after completing an impressive run through the Pac-12 with a 21-9 record in conference play.
That helped position the Wildcats to a regional host, and Johnson believes what his team showed during the regular season is good enough to earn the program a top eight seed in the tournament.
Doing so would ensure the Wildcats would host a super regional should they advance to the next round. Arizona has not received one of the top eight seeds since the NCAA moved to the current format.
"This program's been to Omaha more times than it's won 40 games in a regular season," Johnson said after Saturday's 5-4 walkoff win in the regular season finale. "Outright Pac-12 champions. We only had one loss in the entire season, which was last night, to a team under a hundred in the RPI.
"Book it. I don't know if it's four, I don't know if it's five, I don't know if it's six but there's no way that's not happening."
The selection show, which will be televised by ESPN2, is set to begin at 9 a.m. MST. When the Wildcats are selected for the tournament it will be the 40th time in program history Arizona has made the postseason, which is tied for sixth most in all of college baseball.
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