HarbourCats move towards the 2015 College World Series

Monday morning, the NCAA announced the 64 teams that would be participating in the 2015 edition of the College World Series tournament. This is of interest to HarbourCats fans, as the tournament runs parallel to the start of the West Coast League season and players on teams remaining in the tournament are delayed in showing up here in Victoria. This season, six HarobourCats will be extending their college seasons with hopes of winning a CWS title.

UCLA lifting the hardware in 2013

Perhaps the person with the best shot at hoisting the trophy is freshman infielder Scott Jarvis of the UCLA Bruins. Many analysts consider the #1 ranked Bruins as the odds-on favourite to make the finals on their side of the bracket.  Hoping to reclaim the title they won in 2013, they are hosting their regional tournament beginning Friday.

Three More HarbourCats will be fighting to advance against each other in another California-based regional. Call State Fullerton (Henry Omana) will play its first game against Pepperdine (Nick Wojitysiak and Chase Lambert) also on Friday night. Cal State holds the top spot in this regional and is expected to prevail into the Super Regional.

That leaves Oregon State (Gabe Clark and Michael Gretler) as the only other school sending HarbourCat players into the tournament. OSU is ranked second in their regional beginning Friday in Dallas.

On the Alumni side, ex-HarbourCat Kelly Norris-Jones and his Illinois Fighting Illini enter the tournament as the #6 ranked team in the country (some polls have them ranked as high as #3), hosting their own regional in Champaign. The Illini have had a fantastic season and have a decent shot of making the round of 16.

Teams winning this weekend’s regional tournaments will participate in the 16-team Super-Regionals around the time of our opening weekend. Teams making it past that point play in the CWS Final tourney June 13-23. For a full explanation of the process, see our blog post from last year on the Road to Omaha.

We here at the blog wish all of our past and future HarbourCats success and health throughout the tournament bracket.