Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. I really can’t wait for the NBA Finals and Stanley Cup Final to get started later this week.
In today’s SI:AM:
🗽 Where the Knicks go from here 🟠 Joe Flacco’s place with the Browns 🏀 Latest NBA mock draft
May (and June) Madness
The NCAA baseball tournament began over the weekend, and it’s already gone off the rails. Ten of the 16 regionals have been completed thus far, and half of them have been won by unseeded underdogs.
The headline is that the two top national seeds—the No. 1 seed Vanderbilt Commodores and the No. 2 seed Texas Longhorns—have both been eliminated. It’s just the second time since the current tournament format was introduced in 1999 that the top two seeds have been eliminated in the regional round. Vanderbilt is the first team in that time not to advance even as far as the regional final.
The tournament format favors the seeded teams because all games are played at the home ballpark of the seeded team. (Since the NCAA began seeding the top 16 teams in 2018, an average of 10.2 seeded teams have advanced to the super regionals each year.) But the home-field advantage wasn’t enough for Vanderbilt or Texas this weekend.
The Commodores narrowly avoided disaster with a come-from-behind win in their opening game on Friday against the Wright State Raiders, but Vandy lost its next game the following night against the Louisville Cardinals, pushing the Commodores to the losers’ bracket. That set up a rematch with Wright State, which the Raiders won on Sunday as a late Vandy comeback attempt fell short. (Louisville went on to beat Wright State to advance to the super regional.)
Texas’s loss in its second game against the UTSA Roadrunners forced the Longhorns into the losers’ bracket. And while they staved off elimination with a 15–8 win over the Kansas State Wildcats in their first game on Sunday, the Longhorns lost the rematch with UTSA and were knocked out of the tournament. (The Roadrunners are making their third NCAA tournament appearance in program history, but had never before won a tournament game.)
However, Vanderbilt and Texas weren’t the only high-profile teams to get upset on their home fields this weekend. The Oklahoma State Cowboys eliminated the No. 7 seed Georgia Bulldogs on a walk-off homer after Georgia entered the ninth inning leading 9–7; the No. 11 Clemson Tigers were sent packing with a 16–4 shellacking at the hands of the Kentucky Wildcats; and the No. 12 Oregon Ducks—the Big Ten regular season champs—flamed out spectacularly with back-to-back losses to the Utah Valley Wolverines and Cal Poly Mustangs.
THE COWBOYS HAVE ELIMINATED (7) GEORGIA IN WALK-OFF FASHION #RoadToOmaha x 🎥 ESPN2 / @OSUBaseball pic.twitter.com/A2dsqn3LCh
— NCAA Baseball (@NCAABaseball) June 1, 2025
Six other winner-take-all games on Monday will round out the super regional field. The most interesting of those is at 6 p.m. ET on ESPN2, when the defending champion Tennessee Volunteers will face the Wake Forest Demon Deacons. Wake lost its first game but has won three straight to keep its season alive, including a dramatic win over Tennessee on Sunday night that came on a walk-off walk.
The best of Sports Illustrated
- The New York Knicks fell short of their NBA Finals bid after falling in six games to the Indiana Pacers on Saturday. Chris Mannix writes that the franchise should run it back to keep the title window open.
- Joe Flacco may be 39, but Albert Breer writes the Browns vet enters camp at peace—and with a real shot to start.
- Gilberto Manzano begins his 32 NFL teams in 32 Days series, up first in the series: the Cleveland Browns.
- Sweden's Maja Stark captured her first major title at the U.S. Women's Open, holding off world No. 1 Nelly Korda and Japan's Rio Takeda with a final-round 72 to finish at 7-under 281.
- The 2025 NBA Draft could favor older, game-ready prospects in Kevin Sweeney’s mock draft.
- The defending champion New York Liberty remains undefeated with the league’s second-largest margin of victory after beating the Connecticut Sun, 100-52.
The top five…
… things I saw yesterday:
5. The cinematic presentation of Juan Soto’s homer against the Rockies. (John DeMarsico, the director of Mets games on SNY, is known for doing all sorts of inventive stuff with the camera.)
4. Julie Vanloo’s no-look pass to Kate Martin, who drained a three before getting knocked to the floor.
3. West Virginia’s botched water cooler celebration after beating Kentucky.
2. Cal Raleigh’s MLB-leading 23rd homer of the season.
1. Elly De La Cruz’s home run and heart gesture after learning of his sister’s death.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as SI:AM | Mayhem at NCAA Baseball Tournament as Two Top Seeds Go Down.
