OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Vanderbilt, which gave up just three runs over three games in the SEC Tournament, was awarded the No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament on Monday and was among a record 13 teams from the conference to be selected to the 64-team field.
The tournament opens Friday with 16 double-elimination regionals. Winners advance to eight best-of-three super regionals. Those winners move on to the College World Series in Omaha beginning June 13.
Vanderbilt has won eight straight games and 13 of its past 16 to earn the No. 1 seed for the second time, and first since 2007.
“It’s amazing, it's cool, it's great, I love it,” shortstop Jonathan Vastine said. “The team was excited about it. After today, that No. 1 seed kind of goes out the door because anything can happen.”
The Commodores, who play Wright State in the opener of the Nashville Regional, are in the tournament for the 19th straight time for the longest active streak.
“We understand we have a goal at the end of the year to get to the middle of the country,” pitcher JD Thompson said, referring to Omaha. “You can't de-value anybody coming into a regional like this. It's all good teams, so you respect everybody. If we play good baseball and keep the trend of what we’re doing right now, then we have a good chance.”
The national seeds following Vanderbilt (42-16) are Texas (42-12), Arkansas (43-13), Auburn (38-18), North Carolina (42-12), LSU (43-14), Georgia (42-15) and Oregon State (41-12-1). Those eight teams would be in line to host super regionals if they win their regionals.
Seeds Nos. 9 through 16: Florida State (38-14), Mississippi (40-19), Clemson (44-16), Oregon (42-14), Coastal Carolina (48-11), Tennessee (43-16), UCLA (42-16) and Southern Mississippi (44-14).
The last four teams to get at-large bids, in alphabetical order, were Arizona State, Kansas State, Oklahoma State and Southern California.
The first four teams left out were Southeastern Louisiana, Troy, UConn and Virginia.
The SEC's 13 teams in the tournament are two more than its record 11 that made it in 2024.
The Atlantic Coast Conference has nine teams in the field followed by the Big 12 with eight and the Big Ten with four. The American Athletic, Big West, Conference USA and Sun Belt all have two teams in the tournament.
First-year SEC member Texas, which opened 38-5 overall and 19-2 in conference play, appeared to be a lock for the No. 1 seed before finishing 5-7 with a loss to Tennessee in its conference tournament opener. Arkansas won 20 SEC regular-season games for the third straight year and set a program record with 110 homers. Auburn’s No. 4 national seed ties the 2003 team for the highest in program history.
Texas is in the tournament for a record 64th time. Miami, which lost six of its past seven games, is making its 50th appearance. Florida State will be a regional host for a Division I-record 37th time.
The longest active streaks behind Vanderbilt belong to Florida (17), LSU (13), Oklahoma State (12) and Dallas Baptist (11).
USC Upstate (36-23) is the only team that will be making its first appearance in the Division I tournament. The Spartans had played in three straight Big South championship games before breaking through to beat Charleston Southern 14-2 Saturday to clinch the league's automatic bid.
Oregon State earned home field for regionals and potentially super regionals as the No. 8 seed after having to play 35 of its 54 games away from Corvallis. The Beavers are 17-2 at home.
Northeastern (48-9) has the nation's longest win streak at 27 games after winning the Coastal Athletic Association Tournament. The Huskies lead the nation in shutouts (17), win percentage (.842) and ERA (2.92), among other categories.
Two teams enter the tournament with losing records.
Little Rock (24-32) won five games in four days to win the Ohio Valley Conference Tournament, and its reward is a first-round game at LSU. The Trojans, at No. 8, became the lowest seed to win the conference tournament. They're in NCAAs for the first time since 2011.
North Dakota State (20-32) won the Summit League Tournament for its first appearance since 2021 and will play Arkansas The Bison have the No. 1 nonconference strength of schedule, having gone 1-10 against teams that made the tournament.
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)
FILE - Vanderbilt head coach Tim Corbin walks on the field during an NCAA regional college tournament baseball game against Xavier, June 4, 2023, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey, File)
FILE - Vanderbilt'sRiley Nelson during an NCAA baseball game against Air Force, Feb. 18, 2025, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/John Amis, File)
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — U.S. President Donald Trump and top Iranian officials exchanged dueling threats Friday as widening protests swept across parts of the Islamic Republic, further escalating tensions between the countries after America bombed Iranian nuclear sites in June.
At least eight people have been killed so far in violence surrounding the demonstrations, which were sparked in part by the collapse of Iran’s rial currency but have increasingly seen crowds chanting anti-government slogans.
The protests, now in their sixth day, have become the biggest in Iran since 2022, when the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody triggered nationwide demonstrations. However, the protests have yet to be as widespread and intense as those surrounding the death of Amini, who was detained over not wearing her hijab, or headscarf, to the liking of authorities.
Trump initially wrote on his Truth Social platform, warning Iran that if it “violently kills peaceful protesters,” the United States “will come to their rescue.”
“We are locked and loaded and ready to go,” Trump wrote, without elaborating.
Ali Larijani, a former parliament speaker who serves as the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, alleged that Israel and the U.S. were stoking the demonstrations. He offered no evidence to support the allegation, which Iranian officials have repeatedly made during years of protests sweeping the country.
“Trump should know that intervention by the U.S. in the domestic problem corresponds to chaos in the entire region and the destruction of the U.S. interests,” Larijani wrote on X, which the Iranian government blocks. “The people of the U.S. should know that Trump began the adventurism. They should take care of their own soldiers.”
Larijani’s remarks likely referenced America’s wide military footprint in the region. Iran in June attacked Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar after the U.S. strikes on three nuclear sites during Israel's 12-day war on the Islamic Republic. No one was injured, though a missile did hit a structure there.
As of Friday, no major changes had been made to U.S. troop levels in the Middle East or their preparations following Trump’s social media posts, said a U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military plans.
In a letter late Friday to United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres and the U.N. Security Council, Iran's envoy asked the world body to condemn the rhetoric and reaffirm the country's "inherent right to defend its sovereignty, territorial integrity, and national security, and to protect its people against any foreign interference.”
“The United States of America bears full responsibility for any consequences arising from these unlawful threats and any ensuing escalation," said Amir Saeid Iravani, Iranian ambassador to the U.N.
Ali Shamkhani, an adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who previously was the council’s secretary for years, separately warned that “any interventionist hand that gets too close to the security of Iran will be cut.”
Trump's online message marked a direct sign of support for the demonstrators, something other American presidents have avoided out of concern that activists would be accused of working with the West. During Iran's 2009 Green Movement demonstrations, President Barack Obama held back from publicly backing the protests — something he said in 2022 “was a mistake.”
But such White House support still carries a risk.
“Though the grievances that fuel these and past protests are due to the Iranian government’s own policies, they are likely to use President Trump’s statement as proof that the unrest is driven by external actors,” said Naysan Rafati, an analyst at the International Crisis Group.
“But using that as a justification to crack down more violently risks inviting the very U.S. involvement Trump has hinted at,” he added.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei recently cited a list of Tehran’s longtime grievances regarding U.S. intervention, including a CIA-backed coup in 1953, the downing of a passenger jet in 1988 and the strikes in June.
Protests continued Friday in various cities in the country, even as life largely continued unaffected in the capital, Tehran. Demonstrations have reached over 100 locations in 22 of Iran's 31 provinces, the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency reported. It said the death toll in the demonstrations rose to eight with the death of a demonstrator in Marvdasht in Iran's Fars province.
Demonstrators took to the streets in Zahedan in Iran's restive Sistan and Baluchestan province on the border with Pakistan. The burials of several demonstrators killed in the protests also took place Friday, sparking marches.
Videos purported to show mourners chasing off security force members who attended the funeral of 21-year-old Amirhessam Khodayari. He was killed Wednesday in Kouhdasht, over 400 kilometers (250 miles) southwest of Tehran in Iran's Lorestan province.
Footage also showed Khodayari's father denying his son served in the all-volunteer Basij force of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, as authorities claimed. The semiofficial Fars news agency later reported that there were now questions about the government's claims that he served.
Iran’s civilian government under reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian has been trying to signal it wants to negotiate with protesters. However, Pezeshkian has acknowledged there is not much he can do as Iran’s rial has rapidly depreciated, with $1 now costing some 1.4 million rials. That sparked the initial protests.
The protests, taking root in economic issues, have heard demonstrators chant against Iran’s theocracy as well. Tehran has had little luck in propping up its economy in the months since the June war.
Iran recently said it was no longer enriching uranium at any site in the country, trying to signal to the West that it remains open to potential negotiations over its atomic program to ease sanctions. However, those talks have yet to happen as Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have warned Tehran against reconstituting its atomic program.
Associated Press writers Konstantin Toropin in Washington and Farnoush Amiri in New York contributed to this report.
A woman shows a portrait of the late commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guard expeditionary Quds Force, Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in a U.S. drone attack in 2020 in Iraq, on her smartphone during a ceremony commemorating his death anniversary at the Imam Khomeini grand mosque in Tehran, Iran, Thursday, Jan. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
People wave Iranian flags as one of them holds up a poster of the late commander of the Iran's Revolutionary Guard expeditionary Quds Force, Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in a U.S. drone attack in 2020 in Iraq, during a ceremony commemorating his death anniversary at the Imam Khomeini grand mosque in Tehran, Iran, Thursday, Jan. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
This combo shows President Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago, Monday, Dec. 29, 2025, in Palm Beach, Fla. and Iranian Secretary of Supreme National Security Council Ali Larijani in Beirut, Lebanon, Wednesday, Aug. 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Bilal Hussein)
