The Big Ten Tournament championship trophy will be placed inside the trophy case at the University of Minnesota after the Gophers baseball team defeated Purdue 6-4 in Sunday’s tournament title game.
The final out as the #Gophers claim the #B1GBaseball Championship! pic.twitter.com/va6qbZ8iT8
— Minnesota Baseball (@GopherBaseball) May 27, 2018
Minnesota, ranked 11th in the country, backed up its regular season conference title and went undefeated in the tournament, and now they await Monday’s NCAA Tournament Selection Show to find out where they’ll play next.
Having won both the Big Ten regular season and tournament titles, the Gophers were quickly awarded one of 16 NCAA Regionals in this week’s NCAA Tournament.
Similar to the NCAA men’s and women’s basketball tournaments, the baseball tournament features 64 teams, split into 16 four-team regions.
“We’ll go anywhere and compete with anybody, that’s been our motto all year long,” said Gophers coach John Anderson in a postgame interview on Big Ten Network.
Regionals are double elimination and the winner advances to the Super Regional, which is similar to a Sweet 16 in college basketball. Super Regionals feature best-of-three series between two teams.
No. 1 @GopherBaseball becomes the first team since Indiana in 2014 to win both the Regular Season and Tournament Championships in the same season with a 6-4 win over No. 2 Purdue! #B1GBaseball pic.twitter.com/fpFXqE8DsD
— Big Ten Baseball (@B1Gbaseball) May 27, 2018
Minnesota has not advance to the College World Series (final eight teams) since 1977.
The tournament title is Minnesota’s ninth overall and first since 2010.
The Gophers enter the NCAA Tournament on a nine-game win streak, and they’re an incredible 25-3 since March 30.
