FAYETTEVILLE — When Arkansas Coach Dave Van Horn heard Sunday that Georgia and LSU would likely receive NCAA Tournament national seeds, it was a sign the SEC had some clout.

“I got a call from somebody who knew a little bit about it [but ] didn’t know we were in,” Van Horn said. “But he heard LSU and Georgia were getting top eight seeds, which was good for us.”

It wasn’t just good for Arkansas, which despite being on the NCAA Tournament bubble secured an at-large bid when the field was announced Monday. The SEC landed coveted national seeds for regular-season champion Georgia and conference tournament winner LSU. And for the third time since 2004, nine SEC schools will play in the 64-team tournament, three more than the league with the second most, the Atlantic Coast Conference.

The ACC, with No. 1 Miami, No. 2 North Carolina and No. 4 Florida State, had more national seeds than the SEC. No. 3 Arizona State, No. 5 Cal State Fullerton and No. 6 Rice are the other national seeds.

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The national seeds get homefield advantage for the regionals, which begin Friday, and would get it if they advance to the super regionals the following weekend. The final eight teams advance to the College World Series.

The NCAA Division I Baseball Selection Committee, chaired by outgoing Mississippi State Athletic Director Larry Templeton, apparently had high praise for the SEC despite statistics suggesting the league isn’t as strong as in past years. The conference was 17-26 in games against conferences ranked ahead of it — the ACC, Pacific-10 and Big 12 — by the Ratings Percentage Index. The RPI is a scale used by the NCAA to rank Division I baseball teams by their performance in relationship to strength of schedule. What benefited the SEC, Templeton said Monday, was the conference’s undeniably competitive season. Arkansas didn’t qualify for the SEC Tournament and finished ninth overall, but the Razorbacks’ 14-15 conference

1 record left them just 2 / 2 games out of third.

“A lot of people thought the league was down this year,” Van Horn said and added there may be a lack of top starting pitchers. “The offense wasn’t down, the talent’s not down. It’s good for the SEC.”

Some SEC teams were criticized in recent seasons for watering down their nonconference schedules since the overall strength of the SEC kept RPI rankings high. But Georgia challenged itself early by playing quality Pac-10 teams Oregon State and Arizona —the Bulldogs lost both series— and Arkansas helped its at-large cause by going on the road to play Arizona State and Nebraska.

“I think the thing about the SEC this year that impressed the committee is their strength of schedule had improved over last year,” Templeton said. “It was the work of the whole year in that conference.”

Georgia (35-21-1 ) was considered a lock for a national seed as the regular season neared its conclusion since the Bulldogs were running away with the overall conference title. But doubt began to surface with eight losses in the final 12 games.

The Bulldogs also exited the conference tournament with two losses, and a season-ending 20-game winning streak by LSU (43-16-1 ) seemed to knock Georgia out of a national seed. Templeton admitted he thought the Tigers should have been ranked higher than seventh.

Regardless, one of three top 15 teams from the Big 12 — either regular-season champion Texas A&M, Oklahoma State or Nebraska — was thought to have a national seed locked up. But the Aggies, Cowboys and Cornhuskers also stumbled in the last weeks of the regular season or in their conference tournament.

In the end, the Bulldogs’ season-long domination in the SEC and the committee’s admiration for the conference was a big difference.

“I think we were rewarded for being SEC champions and playing one of the nation’s toughest schedules,” Georgia Coach David Perno said. “The team played excellent baseball for 90 percent of the regular season. We were not punished for not playing that well at the end when we had the SEC title locked up and were banged up at the SEC Tournament.”