NCAA baseball tournament coming to Steel Yard in Gary
Post-Tribune staff report May 27, 2012 11:16PM
Updated: July 3, 2012 11:48AM
The NCAA baseball tournament is coming to Gary.
Purdue was selected as one of the 16 NCAA regional hosts, and the Steel Yard will be the venue for the four-team event, beginning Friday and running through either Sunday or Monday.
Tickets will be on sale through the RailCats ticket office beginning Tuesday. Walk-up ticket sales on each day of the regional will also be available.
As the Big Ten regular season and tournament champion, Purdue will be the No. 1 seed of the four teams at the Gary Regional.
The other three teams at the Gary Regional — which may include Valparaiso, which won the Horizon League Tournament on Sunday to earn the league’s automatic NCAA berth — and the entire 64-team NCAA Tournament field will be unveiled Monday at 11 a.. on ESPNU.
The regional features a double-elimination format. The schedule calls for two games on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Times are set for 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. CT. If necessary, a seventh and final game would be played Monday at 7 p.m. CT.
Any live television coverage of the Gary Regional will be announced later this week.
The Boilermakers’ roster features five players who are natives of Northwest Indiana: Ryan Bridges (Griffith), Blake Mascarello (Crown Point), Connor Podkul (LaPorte), Mike Sudbury (Munster) and Kyle Upp (LaPorte). Head coach Doug Schreiber is also a LaPorte native.
The teams playing in the regional will be staying at hotels in Merrillville.
The winners of the 16 NCAA Regionals advance to the Super Regionals.
The eight Super Regional winners advance to the College World Series in Omaha.
The NCAA has specific requirements for a home stadium to be able to host a regional. Lambert Field, which hosted its 48th and final season of Purdue baseball this year, did not meet some of those requirements.
Loeb Stadium in Lafayette also did not meet NCAA requirements.
