Most top NCAA baseball schools are in the South, where good weather helps teams train year around outside.

But northern schools are good too and that’s where UK will be heading–north–after landing in the Ann Arbor Regional for the NCAA tournament today.

The third-seeded Cats will face off against host and second-seeded Michigan in the first round. One-seeded Arizona will face fourth-seeded Eastern Michigan at the top of the bracket, in what could be a considered a home field advantage for EMU.

Rival and Big East Champion Louisville was placed in the Athens, Ga. regional against Georgia Tech and in-state foe and Sun Belt champion Western Kentucky will face one-seeded Oklahoma State, who is also host for that region.

Michigan (45-12) is fresh off a win over Purdue to become Big Ten tournament champion. Nick Recknagel is a one man offensive powerhouse for the Wolverines. Recknagel leads the Maize and Blue in average (.372), runs (55), hits (77) home runs (23) and RBIs (68). The Wolverines also boast a strong 1-2 punch in the rotation. Chris Fetter is 10-1 with a 2.39 ERA and Zach Putnam is 8-0 with a 2.64 ERA.

Arizona, the top seed in the regional, was not one of the eight top seeds announced. But the Wildcats are still 38-17 in a very tough Pac-10 conference. C.J. Ziegler is the big bat for Arizona, with 19 home runs and 53 RBIs. The starting pitching isn’t amazing, with the best ERA from a starter set at 3.54, but the bullpen boasts some good pitching.

Eastern Michigan is the Mid-American Conference champion. The Eagles are 25-32 on the year, winning most of their games at home. They are also a perfect 4-0 at neutral sites. Steve Bradshaw (.385 average, 53 RBIs) and Zack Leonard (.342, 9 HRs, 51 RBIs) are the bats to watch. The pitching is decent at best, with the lowest ERA for any pitcher in the mid-4s.

The Regionals will run from May 30 to June 2.

UPDATE: UK will play Michigan at 7:30 on Friday, May 30th.

It was always a long shot, but the NCAA confirmed what every UK baseball fan already figured: that Lexington is not hosting a NCAA baseball regional.

In fact, there’s not a regional even coming close. Fellow SEC members Georgia and LSU are hosting and there are three Carolina area schools hosting (North Carolina in Cary, NC, North Carolina State and Coastal Carolina).

Brett Dawson of the Courier-Journal has the entire regional host list.

And that’s about as close as it gets. The good news is that Rivals now has UK slotted a two seed, instead of a iffy three seed. It seems like the sweep of Tennessee and near-sweep of Ole Miss was a good finish in the eyes of most.

The other good news is that this site has nine SEC teams making the regionals (which may be iffy, since that would suggest that one team who didn’t make the conference tournament is in).

The bad news? Rivals puts UK in the Houston regional against constant baseball powerhouse Rice. The Owls are currently No. 5 in the nation and made quite a run in the College World Series last year.

Some notes on Rice: They’ve been to Omaha SIX times since 1997. That’s roughly every other year. Their coach, Wayne Graham, has been around forever and knows his stuff (no disrespect to John Cohen). They are lead by Diego Seastrunk, who boasts a team high 54 RBI’s and a .374 average on a team that could possibly out-slug the Cats on both team’s best day.

So it’s not real comforting if that’s where the Cats land. To be honest with you, there’s not probably no easy road for UK, as the closest/more familiar teams they would play are really good and the farther away they go, travel and the unknown await.

The complete selection show is on ESPN at 12:30 pm eastern today. I’ll be watching, you should too.

Baseball is a growing trend here in UK Wildcat Country (you like the brand mention, don’t you?) and therefore, we will give baseball it’s due.