Emotions will undoubtedly run high for South Carolina baseball coach Ray Tanner this week when his two-seeded Gamecocks head to the NCAA tournament regional in Raleigh, N.C.

USC is likely to face the No. 1 seed N.C. State at some point in the regional. It’s old stomping grounds for Tanner, who coached the Wolfpack from 1988-96 before joining the Gamecocks.

While there’s nothing abnormal about USC heading 3 1/2 hours up the road to the Tar Heel State, there’s another regional taking place a little over two hours away from the Gamecocks’ campus.

Coastal Carolina, located in Conway, locked down a regional on Sunday after winning the Big South tournament on Saturday. It’s no surprise considering the Chanticleers were 47-12 with out-of-conference wins against No. 1 seeds N.C. State and North Carolina, as well as several other ACC schools.

So, why weren’t USC and Coastal headed for a Palmetto State showdown, just like Clemson and the Chanticleers were last year?

It would’ve made perfect since to go there over Raleigh, right?

“We wanted to balance not just those two sites, but we were trying to balance some other sites,” NCAA committee chair Larry Templeton said after the brackets were announced. “How we ended up with our twos in other tournaments probably determined we’d send them to Raleigh.

“We could have sent them to either place. Balancing those two brackets, we just felt like that’s where we needed to put them. You could’ve said why not the other place, too.”

The NCAA has strict criteria about pitting conference teams against each other in regionals, and Alabama was sent to Conway as a No. 3.

But, it’s hard to wonder if there wasn’t more behind the decision.

Coastal Carolina’s baseball stadium is the smallest venue to host an NCAA regional since the field expanded to 64 teams. And while Charles L. Watson Stadium has undergone recent renovations in hopes of hosting this very regional, its capacity is still 2,000. Templeton said on Sunday that the school’s bid to host convinced the committee that adding bleachers in the outfield would be enough to handle the crowds.

If USC had been sent to Conway, the crowds would have swallowed that place whole. Gamecock fans travel big. And to put them at a site with a venue that small would have opened up too many problems, possibly costing Coastal future bids.

So instead, the Gamecocks will have to worry about getting past Charlotte on Friday and N.C. State or James Madison to advance to their third consecutive super regional and eighth time in nine years.

It could be worse. At least USC isn’t a No. 2 at Arizona State like Vanderbilt, who finished a half-game better than the Gamecocks in the SEC regular season and eliminated them from the league tourney last week.