College World Series 2022: Championship Predictions, Format and Full Bracket

The 2022 College World Series kicked off with a pair of upsets.

The Texas A&M Aggies and Texas Longhorns were two of four national seeds that made it to Omaha, Nebraska, and both teams lost their openers inside Charles Schwab Field.

That could be a bad sign for the Stanford Cardinal and Auburn Tigers, who take to the field on Saturday in the two opening games in the bottom half of the bracket.

The Notre Dame Fighting Irish and Oklahoma Sooners are already through to the winners' bracket in the top side of the bracket. They will play Sunday for the ideal position to come out of the top side.

Texas and Texas A&M renew their rivalry with elimination on the line on Sunday. The winner of that game faces the loser of the Notre Dame-Oklahoma clash.

The same format will be followed in the bottom half, where the second batch of games will take place on Monday.

The updated College World Series bracket can be found here on NCAA.com.

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Updated College World Series Schedule

Saturday, June 18

Arkansas vs. Stanford (2 p.m. ET, ESPN)

Ole Miss vs. Auburn (7 p.m. ET, ESPN2)

Sunday, June 19

Texas A&M vs. Texas (2 p.m. ET, ESPN)

Notre Dame vs. Oklahoma (7 p.m. ET, ESPN2)

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Championship Prediction

Notre Dame vs. Stanford

Notre Dame proved once again on Friday night that its offense can't be slowed down.

The Fighting Irish put up seven runs against the Texas pitching staff that sent out ace Pete Hansen to start the game.

Notre Dame downed one of the top aces in college baseball for the second straight round. It won the opening game of the Knoxville super regional against Tennessee's Blade Tidwell.

The ACC side carried the momentum gained from upsetting top-seeded Tennessee into Omaha, and a letdown does not appear to be in sight.

Notre Dame needs to cool off the Oklahoma bats that put up 13 runs on Texas A&M on Friday, but that is something it can achieve after it held Texas' offense, which is one of the best in the nation, to three runs.

The Notre Dame-Oklahoma winner will be viewed as the top contender to advance to the championship series from the top half. That team would only need one win over the program that emerges from the losers' bracket.

Link Jarrett's Fighting Irish are playing some of the best baseball in the sport right now, and it is hard to see them stopped at the moment.

Stanford is hoping it can carve out a similar start as Notre Dame and Oklahoma. The Cardinal take on the Arkansas Razorbacks on Saturday.

The Pac-12 champion could use its bats to get past the first of potentially three SEC foes in the bottom half of the bracket.

Stanford has four players with 18 or more home runs and a potential first-round MLB draft pick in Brock Jones.

The Cardinal could use their bats to power past Arkansas, who used a pair of low-scoring wins to get past North Carolina in the super regional round.

Arkansas proved it could win games with its bats in the regional round, but doing so against Stanford could be a much tougher task.

Stanford has not allowed more than five runs in the NCAA baseball tournament since its opening 20-7 win over Binghamton in the regional round. The Cardinal earned four of their last five wins by holding opponents to four runs or less.

Ole Miss and Auburn achieved a similar level of success in the super regional rounds, but Stanford would be a tougher foe than Southern Miss and Oregon State.

The bottom half of the bracket comes down to how well Stanford can play over the course of multiple games. The Cardinal struggled with that in the first two rounds, as they needed to beat Texas State and UConn twice to advance from each round.

If Stanford avoids a slow start against Arkansas, it can benefit from its combination of strong bats and reliable pitching to make a deep run in Omaha.