June 13, 2007

ASU is home team against UC Irvine

ASU, seeded fifth nationally, will be the home team for its College World Series opener against UC Irvine, a regional No. 2 seed, on Saturday.

In subsequent games, the school that has been the home team the fewest number of times will get to bat last.

If teams are equal in home designation but unequal in times that they were the visitor then the team that has been the visitor more often will be the home team.

If teams are equal in times they have been home and visitor, it gets more complicated. If the teams have met previously, the visitor in the previous game will be the home team. Or the team that was visitor in its preceeding game will be home unless both were visitors in the game before.

A coin flip is used if everything else is equal.

If one team advances to the best-of-3 championship series with no losses and the other with one loss then the undefeated team has choice of being home or away in the first game. The other team gets the choice in Game 2 and the home team for a deciding Game 3, if necessary, is decided by coin flip.

If both teams in the championship series are undefeated or both have one loss, the home team for Game 1 is decided by coin flip.

The Sun Devils are 3-1 against defending national champion Oregon State this season and have not faced Irvine or Cal State Fullerton in its all-West Coast double-elimination bracket.

ASU has not played anyone in the oppositive bracket -- Rice, Louisville, North Carolina, Mississippi State -- this season. The Sun Devils also missed out on host Rice during a 2006 regional, being eliminated via two losses to Baylor.

The Sun Devils have never played Louisville and won't in Omaha unless both get through to the championship series. They have all-time winning records against all the other qualifiers including 7-4 vs. Irvine, 25-23 vs. Fullerton and 34-16 vs. Oregon State.

ASU beat Irvine 11-1 in 2003, the only meeting between them since the Anteaters revived their baseball program in '02. All the games before that in the series were played from 1973-75.