The 2016 NCAA Division I baseball season, play of

college baseball College baseball is baseball that is played on the intercollegiate level at institutions of higher education. In comparison to football and basketball, college competition in the United States plays a smaller role in developing professional pl ...

in the United States organized by the

National Collegiate Athletic Association The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. It also organizes the athletic programs of colleges an ...

(NCAA) at the Division I level, began in February 2016. The season progressed through the regular season, many conference tournaments and championship series, and concluded with the

2016 NCAA Division I baseball tournament The 2016 NCAA Division I baseball tournament began on Friday, June 3, 2016, as part of the 2016 NCAA Division I baseball season. The 64-team, double-elimination tournament concluded with the 2016 College World Series (CWS) in Omaha, Nebraska, st ...

and

2016 College World Series The 2016 NCAA Division I baseball tournament began on Friday, June 3, 2016, as part of the 2016 NCAA Division I baseball season. The 64-team, double-elimination tournament concluded with the 2016 College World Series (CWS) in Omaha, Nebraska, st ...

. The College World Series, consisting of the eight remaining teams in the NCAA tournament and held annually in

Omaha, Nebraska Omaha ( ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Nebraska and the county seat of Douglas County. Omaha is in the Midwestern United States on the Missouri River, about north of the mouth of the Platte River. The nation's 39th-largest cit ...

, at

TD Ameritrade Park Omaha Charles Schwab Field Omaha (formerly TD Ameritrade Park Omaha) is a baseball park in Omaha, Nebraska. Opened in 2011, the stadium serves as a replacement for historic Johnny Rosenblatt Stadium. Charles Schwab Field has a seating capacity of 24,0 ...

, ended on June 30, 2016, with

Coastal Carolina Coastal Carolina University (CCU or Coastal) is a public university in Conway, South Carolina. Founded in 1954 as Coastal Carolina Junior College, and later joining the University of South Carolina System as USC Coastal Carolina, it became an in ...

claiming its first NCAA title in a team sport.

Realignment

Northern Kentucky Northern Kentucky is the third-largest metropolitan area in the U.S. Commonwealth of Kentucky after Louisville and Lexington, and its cities and towns serve as the de facto "south side" communities of Cincinnati, Ohio. The three main counties ...

left the

Atlantic Sun Conference The ASUN Conference, formerly the Atlantic Sun Conference, is a collegiate athletic conference operating mostly in the Southeastern United States. The league participates at the NCAA Division I level, and began sponsoring football at the Divisi ...

for the

Horizon League The Horizon League is an 11-school collegiate athletic conference in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I, whose members are located in and near the Great Lakes region. The Horizon League founded in 1979 as the Midw ...

. *

NJIT {{Infobox university , name = {{nowrap, New Jersey Institute of Technology , image = New Jersey IT seal.svg , image_upright = 0.9 , former_names = Newark College of Engineering (1930–1975)Ne ...

joined the Atlantic Sun, leaving the ranks of Independents. *The merger of the

University of Texas–Pan American , mottoeng = Education, the Guardian of Society , established = , closed = , type = Public university , endowment = $65 million , president = Dr. Havidan Rodriguez ...

and the

University of Texas at Brownsville , mottoeng = Cultivated mind is the guardian genius of democracy. , established = , closed = (merged with UT–Pan American to form The UTRGV) , type = Public State University , presid ...

, formally announced in 2013, took full effect with the 2015–16 school year, creating the new Texas–Rio Grande Valley. The new institution retained Texas–Pan American's membership in the

Western Athletic Conference The Western Athletic Conference (WAC) is an NCAA Division I conference. The WAC covers a broad expanse of the western United States with member institutions located in Arizona, California, New Mexico, Utah, Washington (state), Washington, and Texa ...

. *

Akron Akron () is the fifth-largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Summit County. It is located on the western edge of the Glaciated Allegheny Plateau, about south of downtown Cleveland. As of the 2020 Census, the city prop ...

, of the

Mid-American Conference The Mid-American Conference (MAC) is a National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I collegiate athletic conference with a membership base in the Great Lakes region that stretches from Western New York to Illinois. Nine of the twel ...

, discontinued its program.

Season outlook

Conference standings

Conference winners and tournaments

Twenty-nine

athletic conference An athletic conference is a collection of sports teams, playing competitively against each other in a sports league. In many cases conferences are subdivided into smaller divisions, with the best teams competing at successively higher levels. Confe ...

s each end their

regular season In an organized sports league, a typical season is the portion of one year in which regulated games of the sport are in session: for example, in Major League Baseball the season lasts approximately from the last week of March to the last week of Se ...

s with a

single-elimination tournament A single-elimination, knockout, or sudden death tournament is a type of elimination tournament where the loser of each match-up is immediately eliminated from the tournament. Each winner will play another in the next round, until the final matc ...

or a

double-elimination tournament A double-elimination tournament is a type of elimination tournament competition in which a participant ceases to be eligible to win the tournament's championship upon having lost ''two'' games or matches. It stands in contrast to a single-elimina ...

. The teams in each conference that win their regular season title are given the number one seed in each tournament. The winners of these tournaments receive automatic invitations to the

College World Series

The 2016 College World Series began on June 18 in

Coaching changes

This table lists programs that changed head coaches at any point from the first day of the 2016 season until the day before the first day of the 2017 season.

References

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