NCAA Baseball Tournament 2018: Live updates from regional round day 1

Highlights, lowlights, and more.

The 2018 NCAA baseball tournament opened action on Friday afternoon, and already through the noon games a bevy of home runs have been hit, Mississippi State and Oklahoma have combined for 25 runs through eight innings, and top overall seed Florida downed Columbia after an early scare, 13-5.

As is customary with this tournament, rain delays have already struck hard at one host site: reports out of Oxford, Miss. indicate high winds and the possibility of hail, and so Missouri State and Tennessee Tech are in a holding pattern as of 3:45 pm ET.

The dugouts appear to be flooded, the rain is so bad in Oxford.

No such bad luck in Minneapolis, though, as UCLA and Gonzaga started right on time. In the bottom of the third inning, with Zags runners at first and third Gonzaga catcher Austin Pinorini laced a line drive to far left, where UCLA left fielder Jeremy Ydens caught it mere feet from the foul line, then promptly returned the ball to home plate to throw out Zags third baseman Ernie Yake.

Spectacular throw, and fantastic patience on the part of Bruins catcher Daniel Rosica to haul it in and make the tag. That’s a 7-2 double play, if you’re keeping your scorecard at home, folks.

UCLA leads Gonzaga, 4-2, in the bottom of the sixth.

Back to the Tallahassee regional, where Oklahoma and Mississippi State are trading haymakers, Bulldogs slugger Elijah MacNamee knocked a large man blast to right center, then mimed his reaction to losing sight of the ball before reacquiring it and trotting out of the batter’s box.

“Wait, what? Where? Where’d it g— Ah! There it is. Gotta go.”

Oklahoma led Mississippi State, 19-10, in the top of the ninth, and managed to tack on one more to top the Bulldogs, 20-10. The game was such a slug-fest that it dragged out to nearly five hours, thus providing fodder for those who complain about the length of games.

The Bulldogs then slip into the loser’s side of the bracket, and they’ll get whoever comes out on the wrong side of Florida State and Samford later Friday night.

Returning to the Minneapolis regional, UCLA walked off on Gonzaga in dramatic fashion to seal a 6-5 win over the Zags.

Over at the Oxford regional, where Missouri State players were swimming in the dugout, play was eventually suspended for the day after heavy rain left the better part of the outfield submerged in a few inches of water.

This could complicate the later games, should they be need to decide the regional winner on Monday, but the simple answer is: keep winning, and you won’t have to play twice on one day. No problem.