Road to Omaha 2017

Haven't seen a thread on this. Oregon State and UNC are the top seeds, with Florida, LSU, Texas Tech, TCU, Louisville and Stanford also seeded. FSU, Southern Miss, Clemson, Houston, Kentucky, Long Beach, Arkansas and Wake Forest got the other regionals. All but one of them deserved to host.

Miami missed the tournament for the first time in 44 years. That's just an insane streak.

 

This is the final CWS for Stanford coach Mark Marquess, who is retiring after a 41-year career. If they make Omaha, Kyle Peterson might cry on the broadcast when they're eliminated.

 

N-O-L-E-S...Noles! (?)

FSU last appeared in the CWS a month before I relocated to the Midwest. Coincidence?

(I did make an OKC trip for softball in 2014, so proximity worked out that time).

 

Marquess is incredible. Sure, maybe it's "easy" being the baseball coach at Stanford, but damn that guy has coached some great players.

Being a Beaver alum - I hope they win it all, but this year has been so insane - they've had teams with better players, better pitchers, but this is the Pat Casey-est team he's ever put together. What they've done already is enough to hang your hat on. But I'm guessing they're going to be greedy and want to keep playing as long as they can.

 

Seven of the nine West Coast teams in one Super Regional bracket. No surprise there. LSU rewarded with joke of a regional. Again, no surprise.

No gerat fan of Virginia, but how the Selection Committee could value OOC games played in February and March over conference games played in April and May and give a choking dog like Clemson a regional instead of the Cavsis beyond me. But the NCAA applies one set of criteria to one team, then does the exact opposite with another.

Marquess hasn't made the CWS yet this year. But he has done a nice job, after about a decade of underachieving with the talent Stanford gets. Oregon State has not lost a series at Sunken Diamond since 2004 and is something like 10-3 or 11-2 in the last 13 series against the Cardinal in that span, a pretty incredible feat on top of the incredible feat of a team from the rainy, cold PNW being a national power.

I'm more amazed that ASU and USC, the two most storied programs in the Pac-12, finished next-to-last and dead last this year.

Would love to see OSU-UNC III.

 

Why in the world does anyone give a rat's ass about an ACC or SEC team's OOC RPI? The committee has enough information to make decisions on those teams without regard to their OOC schedule. It's one thing for teams that win in really weak leagues, where it's useful to tell if they've beaten anyone who is actually good, but UVA and Clemson play 15-20 games (or more) against top 50 teams. Who cares what conference those teams play in as long as they're quality?

As you alluded to, OOC games are not played under tournament conditions. They're either played in February when the weather is cold and players are still getting in shape, or they're played midweek against another team's second-line pitching (mostly guys who wouldn't see any action in the tournament). Why would the NCAA focus on them?

The treatment of the West Coast teams is another screwjob.

 

What you see often too is a team such as Virginia has to schedule midweek games, so it plays VMI, JMU, other teams right down the road. Low travel costs, nobody missing class. It works great for everyone. But VMI sees it as an opportunity to get a signature win and throws its ace. UVA doesn't care, it's getting ready for an ACC series that weekend.

 

UCLA got in the tournament with a 30-25 record, but let's all bitch about West Coast bias. And I bet those lower seeded California schools are pretty ok with staying closer to home and not traveling for a weekend in Hattiesburg or Winston-Salem.

 

The same reason most of the small Florida schools get assigned to Gainesville and Tallahassee (and in years gone by Coral Gables) each year. The same reason Arkansas is hosting three schools within a 2.5 hour drive of Fayetteville. It's still a highly regionalized sport with a few exceptions and it makes economic sense to keep as many teams grouped together as possible. Plus, you know, it's kinda fun to play people you're more familiar with. When TCU and A&M drew into the same super regional last year, they didn't cry that it was some anti-Texas conspiracy. They just played. PAC-12 is one of four conferences that got two national seeds each. I'd say they've got just as good a shot as anyone of being well represented in Omaha.

 

Go, Dirtbags!