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Notre Dame

Missed cut: Notre Dame baseball excluded from NCAA Tournament field

IMG_9992by: Tyler Horka05/26/25tbhorka
stiffler
Notre Dame head coach Shawn Stiffler watches in the third inning against Western Michigan Tuesday, March 19, 2024, at Frank Eck Stadium. (Photo by MATT CASHORE / USA TODAY NETWORK)

Notre Dame did almost everything it could to make a late run at NCAA Tournament inclusion. In the end, it still wasn’t enough.

The Fighting Irish have played their final inning of the 2025 season. The tournament field was announced Monday afternoon, and the Irish are not among the participants despite winning 16 of their final 20 games to finish the season 32-21 overall and 14-16 in conference play.

The last four teams to make the tournament were Arizona State, Kansas State, Oklahoma State and USC. The first four teams held out were Southeastern Louisiana, Troy, UConn and Virginia.

Notre Dame lost last week, 5-4 in 10 innings, to Boston College in the first round of the ACC Tournament. It never comes down to just one game; the Irish could have stood to not be run ruled by Miami, 15-1 in 7 innings, just four days prior to falling to the Eagles, for instance. They lost two times to Boston College in the regular season, too, among many more head-scratching defeats.

The Irish began ACC play with a 4-14 record before finally winning a conference series in sweeping Stanford in mid-April. That’s the weekend that kickstarted a furious push to the finish line, but, again, it still was all in an effort that didn’t amount to enough to keep playing ball later this week and into June.

Notre Dame has missed the NCAA Tournament in all three of Shawn Stiffler‘s seasons as head coach. The Irish haven’t been in the tourney since Link Jarrett took them to the College World Series for the third time in program history in 2022.

Stiffler has an overall record of 89-70 and an ACC record of 38-52 since taking over for Jarrett, whose personal standard for Notre Dame baseball was higher than its ever been for the program in its existence. The Irish won back-to-back regionals in Jarrett’s tenure, which had never been done in South Bend before.

Right now, the Irish can’t be concerned about winning a regional. They’d simply just like to qualify for one. Notre Dame finished with a team batting average of .264, ranked 236th nationally, and a team earned run average of 5.11, ranked 81st in the country. The Irish needed to be better in both phases of the game to earn a postseason nod.

Notre Dame has played in the NCAA Tournament 24 times in program history with the first appearance coming in 1949. Since a string of eight consecutive appearances from 1999-2006, the Irish have only been in the tourney three times. Two of those instances were the magical runs with Jarrett.

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