Abilene, Texas, is the destination for No. 5 Linfield for the opening round of the 2011 NCAA Division III Baseball Championships, as announced Monday morning.

Competing as the West Region’s top seed, the Wildcats face Concordia (Texas) in their first regional game Wednesday at 10 a.m. PDT. All games in this regional, hosted by McMurry University, will be played at Walt Driggers Field.

The four other teams invited to the West Regional include Chapman (29-11), Redlands (29-11), Trinity of Texas (33-11) and Texas-Tyler (33-6).

The Wildcats are the only top-10 team in the region, but four others are ranked in the top 25 in the latest poll released by d3baseball.com: Texas-Tyler (11), Chapman (12), Trinity (17) and Redlands (19).

Linfield (31-9) automatically qualified for the tournament by winning the Northwest Conference Championship, its third in four years. Concordia (30-15) was also an automatic qualifier, as the Tornadoes captured the American Southwest Conference crown.

A total of 55 teams were invited to compete in the NCAA Division III Baseball Championships. In addition to the 38 conference champions that qualified automatically, two independents and an additional 15 at-large teams were chosen.

Six teams will compete at four regional sites, seven teams will compete at one regional site and eight teams will compete at three regional sites. All regionals will use a double-elimination format.

The eight regional champions advance to the Division III championship finals, hosted by Lawrence University, May 27-31 at Fox Cities Stadium in Appleton, Wis.