For the first time in 10 years, Sunken Diamond will not be a regional site in the NCAA playoffs. But the Cardinal (32-23) secured a postseason bid for the 12th consecutive year as a No. 3 seed in the region hosted by Baylor, the fourth-ranked team in the nation. Stanford will travel to Waco, Texas, this weekend for the three-day tournament and will begin play on Friday at noon PST against No. 2 seed Texas Christian University. Baylor, meanwhile, will match up against No. 4 seed Texas-San Antonio.

Stanford has not played against any of the three teams since it began keeping track of its game-by-game results in 1959.

The Cardinal received at-large bids in each of the last two years, clinching their postseason spot by winning the Pacific-10 Conference. But this year, Stanford slipped to a sixth-place tie in the Pac-10 with a record of 12-12. The Cardinal dropped two out of three to Southern California in their final series of the year. They will enter the regional on a skid, having lost eight of their last 13 games.

The TCU Horned Frogs (40-18, 20-10 Conference USA), making the first postseason appearance in the school’s history, will present a formidable challenge to head coach Mark Marquess’ squad. TCU tied for the C-USA championship in the end-of-the year tournament when its game with Tulane, the top national seed, was rained out. Tulane is the only team that managed to beat the Horned Frogs in a best-of-three conference series this year.

TCU’s bread-and-butter is its powerful offense. The team hit .310 this year, belted 70 homers and scored 417 runs. Stanford, by comparison, hit .288, with only 47 homers and 357 runs.

The Horned Frogs boast one of the best pitchers in the Regional, junior Lance Broadway, who is 14-1 on the year with a 1.67 ERA. He will match up against one of Stanford’s co-aces on Friday, either junior Mark Romanczuk (5-6, 4.33) or junior Jeff Gilmore (10-2, 3.56).

Baylor (39-21, 19-8 Big 12) made the tournament as the fourth national seed despite a record that looks like it would put them somewhere near the middle of the pack. Head coach Steve Smith tried to explain his team’s high selection.

“Certainly [our schedule] translated into a high RPI and that, in combination with our record and our finish in the conference, those are the two things that have vaulted us into that high of a national seed,” he said.

Baylor has the best all-around pitching staff of any team in the regional, something that is crucial in regional play because a team could play up to five games in one weekend. The Bears’ staff has a 3.33 ERA, and the team has a stable of six pitchers with more than 50 innings pitched and ERAs of 4.03 or below. Baylor’s ace, Mark McCormick, has posted a 3.08 ERA this year to go with a 7-3 record.

Smith called Texas-San Antonio’s late-season surge “one of the best stories in college baseball this year.” The Roadrunners (27-32, 14-13 Southland Conference) lost their first 11 games of the year but started to turn their season around with a 9-4 upset of Notre Dame on March 9. The Roadrunners went on to win their Conference tournament and receive the SLC’s automatic bid, making the postseason for the first time since 1994.

The winners of the first round games will face each other on Saturday in Game 3. Saturday’s contests will also pit the losers of the two games against each other in an elimination match in Game 4. The winner of Game 4 and the loser of Game 3 will play on Sunday to determine which teams goes to the Championship game. That will be held on Sunday afternoon, with another game on Monday, if necessary.