FULLERTON - For the first time in Orange County sports history, Big West rivals UC Irvine and Cal State Fullerton both were selected Sunday as regional hosts in the NCAA Division I Baseball Championships, beginning this weekend at 16 sites around the nation.

But both schools will have to wait another day for their four-team regional brackets and the rest of the 64-team tournament field to be revealed.

UCI and Cal State Fullerton, respectively ranked No. 1 and No. 4 in last week's Baseball America national poll, also are strong candidates to be designated as two of the top eight overall NCAA seeds.

That is important to both teams, because it would mean they could not meet until the College World Series in Omaha in mid-June. It also would mean both teams would stay at home for two-team super regionals if they win their own regionals this weekend.

"I've said all along that we were two of the better teams in the country, and I hope the (NCAA selection) committee recognizes that and that we get to be in opposite brackets and not have to bump one other off," said CSF coach Dave Serrano.

And Serrano was talking about opposite four-team brackets in Omaha - not super regionals - so it's obvious how lofty his team's goals are. Of course, he also remembers the 2007 College World Series, when West Coast teams UCI, Fullerton, Arizona State and Oregon State were placed in the same CWS bracket. (That year, UCI, then coached by Serrano, eliminated Fullerton and Arizona State in back-to-back games but lost to eventual national champion Oregon State.)

This will be the first year UCI is a regional host, having unsuccessfully bid the previous two years to open the NCAA Tournament at home. The Anteaters' Big West regular-season championship - CSF was a distant runner-up - and UCI's pledge to bring in temporary bleachers to increase seating capacity at newly renamed Cicerone Field obviously swayed the selection committee.

But now UCI has to sweat out the awarding of national seeds. Despite its No. 1 ranking in all five major national polls last week, UCI was 18th in the most recent RPI power rankings used by the selection committee to seed teams. Fourteen of the 16 teams that were selected as regional hosts had better RPIs than UCI as of Sunday.

UCI coach Mike Gillespie conceded he is concerned about his team's power ranking, but he said he hopes all of the factors weighed by the committee "add up" to a top-eight seed.

For what it's worth, Cal State Fullerton athletic director Brian Quinn, who is on the NCAA selection committee, told me early in the week that Fullerton, UCI and Arizona State all had strong credentials to be considered as national seeds.

Another unsolicited concern raised individually by Serrano and Gillespie was which regional San Diego State is assigned. Why? Because SDSU pitcher Stephen Strasburg, the projected No. 1 pick in this year's draft, can alter a regional with his 100-mph fastball.

"There has been speculation that Strasburg and San Diego State are coming here (to the Fullerton regional), but who knows?" Serrano said. "You're going to have beat good teams and beat good pitchers to get to advance. There is no easy road."

All roads to Omaha will become much clearer Monday.

Clip and save: Cal State Fullerton first baseman Jared Clark is hoping the Titans get to play the Anteaters again, because UCI won two of three from Fullerton during the regular season in early April.

"We want Irvine again, whether it's in the super regionals or Omaha," said Clark, who led the Big West in RBIs during the regular season. "We want to see 'em again. I think they got us at a pretty rough time in our season, so we'd like to get another shot at them."

Regional hosts: The 16 schools designated as regional hosts, by conference:

ACC: North Carolina, Florida State, Clemson, Georgia Tech.

SEC: Louisiana State, Florida, Mississippi.

Big West: UCI, Cal State Fullerton.

Big 12: Texas, Oklahoma

CUSA: Rice, East Carolina.

Pac-10: Arizona State.

Big East: Louisville.

Mountain West: Texas Christian.