2016 College Baseball Thread

BC's OOC schedule is laughable. Losing conference record, no Power 5 OOC opponents, but play in the ACC. Perfect recipe for an at-large berth.

 

And slipped in as an apparent news dump on a holiday, in the middle of the selection show, is that Augie Garrido is out as Texas' coach after 20 years. They'd missed the NCAA Tournament three times in five years, including this year.

Augie Garrido stepping down as Longhorns baseball coach

 

NCAA decided to grade them on a curve after the football and hoops disasters.

 

Power 5 out of conference opponents is a weird thing to judge teams on in baseball. Should you be rewarded for scheduling Washington State instead of Fullerton? Points for playing Northwestern instead of Houston?

 

Mitch Gaspard gets the proverbial home version board game and box of Rice A Roni from Alabama.

Alabama Baseball Head Coach Mitch Gaspard Resigns

 

Good point. The mid-major conferences in baseball are probably stronger on a national level than their counterparts in any other sport. The Big West and Conference USA might be better, in any given year, than the Big 10.

 

Fine, I will acknowledge that point to an extent, although WSU is part of a conference that is much stronger, top to bottom, than the Big West.

BC played nobody. I would be embarrassed to be part of a selection committee that awarded BC an at-large berth. given it's virtually non-existent season accomplishments. The problem isn't giving bids to 6 or 7 or possibly even eight ACC teams, seeing as how the conference has become so bloated by expansion. It's 10, when clearly the resume of teams 9 and 10 are so terrible and their RPIs were artificially inflated in a large part by those of conference members they didn't even play.

 

Breaking down the regionals, Virginia and N.C. State not only got the benefit of the doubt as regional hosts, but gets what look like two of the easier sets of opponents.
Virginia has one top-30 team (Bryant). North Carolina State gets Saint Mart's (RPI No. 57) and Navy (No. 145), although Coastal Carolina is mixed in there and is going to be tough. Hell, even overall No. 1 seed Florida pulled No. 20 Georgia Tech into its orbit. Louisville got a cupcake draw, too, with no top 30 teams in its regional.
Florida State's regional is super tough with FSU, Southern Miss, a good South Alabama team and a sneaky-good Alabama State team. Alabama State went undefeated in the SWAC (yeah, it's the SWAC, but still ...) and can score some runs. Wouldn't surprise me if they win a game this weekend.

 

This is a ridiculous statement, sorry.

BC beat Ohio State (regional team) out of conference. It won two of three from N.C. State (regional host). It beat Louisville (national No. 2 seed) two out of three. It beat Virginia (regional host) two out of three. It won two out of three from Wake Forest and from Georgia Tech, both regional teams.

Boston College may not have done a ton out of conference, but to say it didn't accomplish anything this year is patently false.

 

I not only expect Coastal Carolina to win N.C. State's regional, I expect them to do it without losing a game. That was a bum draw for the Pack.

 

Wake Forest finished 6th in a 7-team division. Georgia Tech finished 4th in a seven-team division. Both had losing conference records. I don't consider winning a series from a team with a losing conference record a major accomplishment. It did have three nice series wins, two of which were over the weakest of the 16 regional hosts.

It lost to NDSU and Butler. It lost a series to Pittsburgh. It was swept by Notre Dame. It's biggest OOC win was over Ohio State, from a conference that others here don't even deem a power baseball conference. Call them what they are: A below-average ACC team with a losing league record, that benefitted greatly by skipping Miami and having two games against FSU rained out; that played no one OOC, but earned an NCAA berth because the selection committee over-rewarded the ACC with about three too many berths.

I can't remember a power conference team with a winning conference record, a plus-16 overall record and a 5-1 record in its last six games being left out. Interesting that the last team in was South Alabama, the school where the head of the selection committee is the AD, and that the power conference that got the fewest bids had no rep on the selection committee..

 

Looking it over and starting to think A&M might have gotten a tough draw. I'm not sure I see Minnesota or Wake as teams that will make it to Omaha, but they both have a lot of guys in the lineup who can rake. I could see one or both of them making it tough on the Aggies by getting them deep in the bullpen.