Jockeying for NCAA Tournament bids ramps up in college baseball this week with conference tournaments taking center stage.
Tournament champions in 29 conferences will be automatic qualifiers in the 64-team national tournament, which opens with regional play May 30.
Regional hosts will be announced Sunday and the rest of the field next Monday. The College World Series is June 13 through June 22 or 23 in Omaha, Nebraska.
A look at the tournaments in the power conferences:
Site: Durham Bulls Athletic Park; Durham, North Carolina.
Days: Tuesday to Sunday.
2024 champion: Duke.
Top seed: Georgia Tech.
Short hops: The Yellow Jackets won their first outright regular-season title since 2005, and it came in 32-year coach Danny Hall's final season. ... Six ACC teams won at least 17 conference games. ... Florida State LHP Jamie Arnold (6-2, 2.59 ERA) is the No. 3 MLB draft prospect by MLB.com. ... Jake Knapp's 2.14 ERA for North Carolina ranks second in the nation among pitchers with at least 80 innings pitched. ... This is the 51st ACC Tournament and 27th played in the state of North Carolina. Only Virginia and Clemson have participated in all of them. FSU's Alex Lodise is batting an ACC- and power conference-leading .422.
Site: Charles Schwab Field; Omaha, Nebraska.
Days: Tuesday to Sunday.
2024 champion: Nebraska.
Top seed: Oregon.
Short hops: The Ducks shared the regular-season title with UCLA after sweeping Iowa on the road, outscoring the Hawkeyes 32-10 with 11 homers in the three games. ... The four former Pac-12 teams that entered the conference this season are all top-five seeds: No. 1 Oregon, No. 2 UCLA, No. 4 Southern California and No. 5 Washington. Iowa is No. 3. ... Oregon's Mason Neville leads the nation with 26 homers. ... UCLA's Michael Barnett (10-1) leads the Big Ten in wins. ... Benny Casillas of Michigan is batting a Big Ten-best .406.
Site: Globe Life Field; Arlington, Texas.
Days: Wednesday to Saturday.
2024 champion: Oklahoma State.
Top seed: West Virginia.
Short hops: The 12-team tournament will be played in a single-elimination format for the first time. ... West Virginia comes in off four straight losses after getting swept by Kansas. The Mountaineers finished percentage points ahead of the Jayhawks for their first outright regular-season title in baseball since joining the Big 12 in 2012-13. ... Kansas earned the second seed, its highest Big 12 seeding in program history. ... Arizona's 34 triples are most in the nation since New Mexico State had the same number in 2019. ... Cincinnati's Kennington Cross is batting a Big 12-best .414.
Site: Metropolitan Complex; Hoover, Alabama.
Days: Tuesday through Sunday.
2024 champion: Tennessee.
Top seed: Texas.
Short hops: Texas is the first team to win the SEC regular-season title in its first season since the league’s inaugural campaign in 1933. ... The Longhorns' 42-11 regular-season record was its best since 2010. ... Tennessee's Andrew Fischer leads the SEC in homers (22), slugging (.779), on-base percentage (.502), on-base plus slugging (1.281) and walks (56). ... Arkansas' .983 fielding percentage is second nationally. ... Dylan Volantis' 11 saves in SEC play for Texas are a freshman conference record.
LSU (42-13) won two of three at South Carolina and remains No. 1 in the polls.
D1Baseball.com and the National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association rank Texas (42-11) second and North Carolina (39-12) third. Baseball America has North Carolina second and Georgia (42-14) third.
The Longhorns won two of three at Oklahoma, the Tar Heels took two of three at Florida State and the Bulldogs won two of three at home against Georgia.
Columbia tied its program record with seven home runs in a 14-6 win over Harvard in the Ivy League championship game Sunday, making the Lions the first team to clinch an NCAA Tournament bid. ... East Tennessee State won its first Southern Conference regular-season title since 1980 with an 11-2 win over the Citadel on Saturday. ... Louisville scored at least one run in every inning of a 14-9 win over Wake Forest on Saturday. ... Charleston Southern's Kaden Smith tied the NCAA single-game record with five doubles in a 14-4 win over Gardner-Webb on Thursday. Smith became the ninth player to do it and first since Appalachian State's Luke Drumheller against Furman in 2019.
AP college sports: https://apnews.com/hub/college-sports
FILE - The NCAA logo is seen on a baseball during an NCAA college baseball tournament regional game between Louisiana-Lafayette and Mississippi State in Lafayette, La., Monday, June 2, 2014. (AP Photo/Jonathan Bachman, file)
RHO, Italy (AP) — No ice is colder and harder than speedskating ice. The precision it takes has meant that Olympic speedskaters have never competed for gold on a temporary indoor rink – until the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Games.
In the pursuit of maximum glide and minimum friction, Olympic officials brought on ice master Mark Messer, a veteran of six previous Olympic speedskating tracks and the ice technician in charge of the Olympic Oval in Calgary, Canada — one of the fastest tracks in the world with over 300 records.
Messer has been putting that experience to work one thin layer of ice at a time since the end of October at the new Speed Skating Stadium, built inside adjacent trade fair halls in the city of Rho just north of Milan.
“It’s one of the biggest challenges I’ve had in icemaking,’’ Messer said during an interview less than two weeks into the process.
If Goldilocks were a speedskater, hockey ice would be medium hard, for fast puck movement and sharp turns. Figure skating ice would be softer, allowing push off for jumps and so the ice doesn’t shatter on landing. Curling ice is the softest and warmest of all, for controlled sliding.
For speedskating ice to be just right, it must be hard, cold and clean. And very, very smooth.
“The blades are so sharp, that if there is some dirt, the blade will lose the edge,’’ Messer said, and the skater will lose speed.
Speedskater Enrico Fabris, who won two Olympic golds in Turin in 2006, has traded in his skates to be deputy sports manager at the speedskating venue in Rho. For him, perfect ice means the conditions are the same for all skaters — and then if it's fast ice, so much the better.
"It's more of a pleasure to skate on this ice,'' he said.
Messer’s first Olympics were in Calgary in 1988 — the first time speedskating was held indoors. “That gave us some advantages because we didn’t have to worry about the weather, wind blowing or rain,’’ he said. Now he is upping the challenge by becoming the first ice master to build a temporary rink for the Olympics.
Before Messer arrived in Italy, workers spent weeks setting up insulation to level the floor and then a network of pipes and rubber tubes that carry glycol — an antifreeze — that is brought down to minus 7 or minus 8 degrees Celsius (17.6 to 19.4 degrees Fahrenheit) to make the ice.
Water is run through a purification system — but it can’t be too pure, or the ice that forms will be too brittle. Just the right amount of impurities “holds the ice together,’’ Messer said.
The first layers of water are applied slowly, with a spray nozzle; after the ice reaches a few centimeters it is painted white — a full day’s work — and the stripes are added to make lanes.
“The first one takes about 45 minutes. And then as soon as it freezes, we go back and do it again, and again and again. So we do it hundreds of times,’’ Messer said.
As the ice gets thicker, and is more stable, workers apply subsequent layers of water with hoses. Messer attaches his hose to hockey sticks for easier spreading.
What must absolutely be avoided is dirt, dust or frost — all of which can cause friction for the skaters, slowing them down. The goal is that when the skaters push “they can go as far as possible with the least amount of effort,’’ Messer said.
The Zamboni ice resurfacing machine plays a key role in keeping the track clean, cutting off a layer and spraying water to make a new surface.
One challenge is gauging how quickly the water from the resurfacing machine freezes in the temporary rink.
Another is getting the ice to the right thickness so that the Zamboni, weighing in at six tons, doesn’t shift the insulation, rubber tubing or ice itself.
“When you drive that out, if there’s anything moving it will move. We don’t want that,’’ Messer said.
The rink got its first big test on Nov. 29-30 during a Junior World Cup event. In a permanent rink, test events are usually held a year before the Olympics, leaving more time for adjustments. “We have a very small window to learn,’’ Messer acknowledged.
Dutch speedskater Kayo Vos, who won the men’s neo-senior 1,000 meters, said the ice was a little soft — but Messer didn’t seem too concerned.
“We went very modest to start, now we can start to change the temperatures and try to make it faster and still maintain it as a safe ice,’’ he said.
Fine-tuning the air temperature and humidity and ice temperature must be done methodically — taking into account that there will be 6,000 spectators in the venue for each event. The next real test will be on Jan. 31, when the Olympians take to the ice for their first training session.
“Eighty percent of the work is done but the hardest part is the last 20 percent, where we have to try to find the values and the way of running the equipment so all the skaters get the same conditions and all the skaters get the best conditions,’’ Messer said.
AP Winter Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics
Serpentines are set on the ice of the stadium where speed skating discipline of the Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics will take place, in Rho, outskirt of Milan, Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)
Ice Master Mark Messer poses in the stadium where speed skating discipline of the Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics will take place, in Rho, outskirt of Milan, Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)
Workers clean the ice surface during a peed skating Junior World Cup and Olympic test event, in Rho, near Milan, Italy, Saturday, Nov. 29, 2025. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)
Ice Master Mark Messer poses in the stadium where speed skating discipline of the Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics will take place, in Rho, outskirt of Milan, Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)
Ice Master Mark Messer poses in the stadium where speed skating discipline of the Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics will take place, in Rho, outskirt of Milan, Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)
