Miami hosts Coral Gables Regional this weekend

Miami baseball players look on as ESPN announces the Coral Gables Regional Monday afternoon. Screen shot // Christina De Nicola

Miami baseball players look on as ESPN announces the Coral Gables Regional Monday afternoon. Screen shot // Christina De NicolaTop-seeded Miami will host second-seeded Texas A&M, third-seeded Florida International and fourth-seeded Dartmouth this weekend in the Coral Gables Regional.

UM is one of eight Atlantic Coast Conference programs to make the NCAA baseball tournament. Virginia (47-11) and Georgia Tech (45-13) were among the top-eight national seeds.

Both the Aggies (40-19-1) of the Big 12 and the Golden Panthers (36-23) of the Sun Belt won their conference tournaments and will kick things off Friday at noon, while the Hurricanes (40-17) and Big Green (26-17), winners of the Ivy League Conference, play at 4 p.m.

On the line is FIU sophomore infielder Garrett Wittels’ 54-game hit streak, which is four shy of Robin Ventura’s record set in 1987.

“That’s amazing. To do that is outstanding,” said sophomore third baseman Harold Martinez, who has a team-high 19 homers in the cleanup spot for the Canes. “He’s having a great year. Fifty-four games is something crazy to do.”

Head coach Jim Morris said that he was not familiar with any of the teams, but that the Canes have enough time to prepare. A scheduled rotation has not been set, but redshirt junior left-hander Eric Erickson is done for the season.

Wittels entered the conference championship game hitting .414 with two home runs and 57 RBI.

“It would be nice to stop his streak,” said junior left-hander Chris Hernandez, who is 8-3 with a 3.02 ERA, “but we’ll see if we even face him.”

ESPNU will televise the entire regional.

Hurricanes Baseball NCAA announcement