June 1, 2006
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The Notre Dame baseball team (45-14-1, 21-5-1 BIG EAST), ranked as high as 15th (per Baseball America) – is back on the road for the fourth straight week, as a participant in the NCAA Lexington Regional at the University of Kentucky … ND is the 3rd seed in the 4-team, double-elimination regional and will face #2 seed College of Charleston (43-15; #24 in BA poll) in the early game (2:00 p.m. EDT) on Friday, June 2 at Hagan Stadium (top seed/#13 UK and Ball State play at 7:00) … the losers then will play on Saturday at 2:00 and the winners at 7:00 (the Sat. schedule includes a 2:00 elimination game and the first title game at 7:00 – with the “if necessary” game to be played Monday at 7:00) … ND is one of just 10 teams to appear in the NCAAs every year since 1999 (the Irish reached the regional final every year from 2000-04) … ND has reached 40 wins in 17 of the past 18 seasons and owns the nation’s 4th-best win pct. of the decade (.733) … the Irish just extended their unprecedented run of BIG EAST Tournament titles to five (in Clearwater, Fla.), the nation’s 2nd-longest active streak of conference tournament titles … junior RHP Jeff Samardzija is slated to start game-1 in Lexington (rest of rotation TBA) … the Irish are in the midst of playing in five cities over 20 days and would be on the road for 23 of 26 days if ND plays through Monday … note: an updated version of these notes will be available Thursday night, as will the customary gameday notes (with player bio. capsules) throughout the regional.