The Road to Omaha: NCAA Baseball Tournament Thread

Apparently, the selection committee agrees with you. The ACC regular season "champ" (FSU) isn't a national seed and the ACC Tournament Champ (Virginia, with a 43-12 record) gets to go all the way across the country to face Strasburg in the first round. And not only that, the other two teams in that regional are the No. 1 team in the country and the defending national champs.

 

LET'S-GO MA-SON.

Seriously, 42-12 ain't bad.

 

Because the Big 12 sucks? How the heck to Baylor and Okie State get in?

It's a joke; 20 at-large bids to the ACC, Big 12 and SEC, and no West Coast team except for the three national seeds is even a No. 2 seed? San Jose State, which wins the league that produced last year's NC, and wins 40 games, doesn't get in, or Stanford, which can play rings around Baylor and Okie State (and has for decades) gets left out with an identical record as Baylor's (and no 11-game league losing streak)?

This tournament is so biased in favor of the Southeast/Big 12. It sure would be nice if they'd justify that preferential treatment by winning once in a while. Instead someone from the Pac-10, Big West or WAC will win again, and make it 5 of the last 6.

 

Comparing the UC Irvine regional and the CS Fullerton regional, it looks really skewed. UCI won the Big West by 6 games, beat CSF 2 of 3 and has been No. 1 in the nation for about a month. That regional looks much tougher than the CSF regional.
I guess most people think the UC Irvine regional is horribly botched. Anybody think not?

 

Nice to see my Southern Miss Golden Eagles getting some love from the selection committee. Good going-away present for their coach, Corky Palmer, who is retiring at the end of the season and who is one of the truly nice guys in the business.

Definitely played their way into the field by getting to the C-USA championship game before losing to Rice 8-6 on Sunday. They could make some noise in the Atlanta regional, with Elon, Georgia State and Ga. Tech, none of whom are particularly scary.

 

Indiana has the pitching to come out of Louisville's bracket, even if they are a 4 seed.

Doesn't matter, though, because whoever gets out of there will get pole-axed by Fullerton in the Super Regional.

 

Apparently Rick Jones of Tulane was counting his chickens on New Orleans TV on Sunday night. USM beat 'em twice in the C-USA tournament, granted, in Hattiesburg, but USM had the 3-2 edge on the Greenies, who played the C-USA series with Southern in New Orleans.

Other than Rhode Island, and maybe Tulane, who were the big omissions?

 

That jumped out at me, too. They might be able to win that thing.
Meanwhile, a few hours south in Tallahassee, you have Florida State, Georgia AND Ohio State in the same regional? Yipes.

 

Yeah, it's botched. But UCI still has a very good shot at advancing.
Fresno State isn't all that good, so they should handle the Bulldogs in the first game. And then they'll likely be facing a pretty mediocre San Diego State team on Saturday.

But think about UVA. The Cavaliers have to face the best pitcher in the history of the earth in the first game. If they lose that, which is likely, then they face the defending national champions who thrive in elimination games. And then if they win that, they'll still have to beat SD State once and then they'll have to beat the No. 1 team in the nation two games in a row. On their home field. 3,000 miles away.

Tough road.

 

Yeah, the SEC and Big 12 never win it. Ever.
Well, unless you count that run of 12 championships in 15 years (for the SEC, Big 12 and Rice) between 1990 and 2005.

 

And, yet, which conference has the most host sites?

The ACC. Unless I'm reading wrong.

 

Correction: The SEC and Big 12 have combined for nine championships since 1990, not 12 (1990, 1991, 1993, 1994, 1996, 1997, 2000, 2002, 2005).

Rice is not, nor ever has been, a member of the Big 12 or SEC conferences. So Rice doesn't count when I say SEC/Big 12, so take away the 2003 title.

LSU and Texas combined for 7 of those 9 championships and yes, they have excellent programs. But during that span of titles, neither conference has had much depth beyond those two super powers. Georgia won in 1990, Oklahoma in 1994, and that's ancient history, otherwise nobody.

Since the end of Gorilla ball after the 1998 season, and since the advent of the universal start date and a universal limit on the number of games teams could play - basically, when everyone started playing by the same rules - the SEC has one title and two second-place finishes.

The same applied to Miami. Once they joined a conference and couldn't play 50 home games anymore - in effect, playing by the same rules as everyone else - they've dropped considerably.

As far as Virginia goes, play someone out of conference. Its nonleague schedule was a joke.