A double-elimination tournament is broken into two sets of brackets, generally called the winner’s bracket and the loser’s bracket. Each team begins in the winner’s bracket, but with one loss, goes into a loser’s bracket, where they will have to play their way back.
In a four-team bracket, which is what Division I college baseball uses, the two first-round losing teams will play in an elimination game, with the loser eliminated. The two first-round teams that won will play each other. The loser of that game will then face the winner of the elimination game.
The loser of that game will then have two losses and is eliminated, and the winner reaches the championship against the team that’s already won its first two games.
In college baseball, the championship finals are set up as a possible two games, because it would be unfair to have the winner’s bracket champion eliminated with its first loss. So while the winner’s bracket champion needs to beat the loser’s bracket champion once to win the tournament, the loser’s bracket champion must win twice.
