Defending champion Texas heads to No. 1 Florida State

Defending national champion Texas is hitting the road for a super regional matchup at Florida State, the No. 1 national seed.

The Longhorns (46-18) and Seminoles (54-11-1), traditionally among college baseball's most successful programs, begin play Saturday night in one of eight best-of-three super regionals announced Monday by the NCAA Division I baseball committee.

The other sites and pairings are:

North Carolina State (45-16) at Miami (42-15-1); Houston (36-28) at Rice (51-10); and Southwest Missouri State (38-24) at Ohio State (44-19), starting Saturday;

Baylor (44-21) at LSU (43-19-1); Arizona State (53-12) at Cal State Fullerton (46-13); Long Beach State (41-18) at Stanford (44-15); and North Carolina (42-21) at South Carolina (42-20), starting Friday.

All games will be played on campus fields, and each super regional winner earns a berth in the College World Series at Omaha, Neb., starting June 13.

Texas and Florida State survived close calls in the regionals before advancing. The Longhorns were taken to an elimination game by Lamar, while the Seminoles had to beat South Alabama twice Sunday.

Florida State, which has played in 18 College World Series, is playing in its fifth consecutive super regional. Texas advanced to its third super regional in five years.

Of the eight national seeds, just No. 3 Georgia Tech and No. 4 Auburn failed to get to the super regionals.

"I don't think I've been as excited as I was (Sunday) watching the scores," said NCAA committee chairman Charlie Carr, the senior associate athletic director at Florida State. "We had a little bit of everything."

Three teams seeded No. 3 in their regionals -- Houston, Southwest Missouri State and Ohio State -- advanced.

"Needless to say, picking seeds isn't an exact science," Carr said. "We certainly had some teams create some excitement."

The committee gave preference to the national seeds in selecting super regional hosts.

"As we did in the regionals, we tried to reward teams' success on the field," Carr said. "You want to reward the people doing well on the field."

Four of last year's College World Series participants -- Texas, South Carolina, Rice and Stanford -- are two wins away from return trips. Houston and Ohio State are looking for their first CWS appearances since 1967, while North Carolina State hasn't been to Omaha since 1968. Southwest Missouri State has never been in the College World Series.

"Bottom line, you really see an unbelievable balance across college baseball," Carr said. "We're excited and proud that we had so much success, not so much as a committee, but in college baseball."

ESPN will televise all super regional games for the first time, with all games available on a special pay-per-view package. Some super regionals will be shown on ESPN and ESPN2, while others will be televised regionally.

"ESPN worked diligently with us to give all of our teams an opportunity to play on national television," Carr said. "We're tremendously excited about this and are looking forward to making it successful."