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Bids by conference: SEC (12), ACC (9), Big 12 (6), Big Ten (4), Sun Belt (4), Conference USA (3), Big West (2), SoCon (2)
One thing to keep in mind with the way NCAA tournament seedings now operate: The NCAA Baseball Selection Committee will now rank the Top 32 teams, with 17-32 teams being grouped in pods as two seeds with the Top 16 seeds. For instance, teams in the 29-32 range will go national seeds in the No’s 1-4 range, teams in the 25-28 range will go to national seeds No’s 5-8, teams in the 21-24 range will go to national seeds in the No’s 9-12 range and teams in the 17-20 range will be two seeds at the No’s 13-16 regionals. It is worth noting two things: geographical considerations still matter when applicable, and you still cannot have two teams from the same conference in the same regional. That will naturally cause some seeding manipulation during the process.
Mark Etheridge, Kendall Rogers and Aaron Fitt, who have a combined 60 years of experience covering college baseball, compile our projections.
Bracket Analysis
• The 16 host sites were announced Sunday evening, so our final projection was constructed with that knowledge already in hand. The first step was seeding those top 16 hosts, and our top eight national seeds remains the same from our projection this morning:
1. UCLA
2. Georgia Tech
3. Georgia
4. Auburn
5. North Carolina
6. Texas
7. Alabama
8. Florida
• The longest part of our discussion on the Selection Eve Nerdcast centered around the at-large bubble, where we wound up with four open spots, and 11 viable candidates battling for those four spots. It took us quite a while to narrow it down to four, but we landed on Troy, NC State, Kentucky and Mercer as our final four teams, in that order. Troy’s No. 2 nonconference strength of schedule and No. 6 overall SOS wound up carrying a lot of weight, and when we looked at the totality of all these cases with fresh eyes, we determined that Troy should be at the top of this bubble heap — a change from this morning, when Troy was team No. 64. NC State still gets in based upon its 14-17 record against the second-hardest schedule in the ACC. Kentucky went just 13-18 against the easiest schedule in the SEC, but the Wildcats did at least sweep Alabama and win a series from Tennessee — and SEC teams that win 13 games in conference with an RPI in the 30s typically get the benefit of the doubt. We made the mistake of leaving such teams out of our final projection in each of the last two years, and those teams wound up getting in anyway, so this year we were determined not to repeat our mistake.
• That left one spot, and a host of teams with real cases, but also real warts. We wound up going with Mercer, as a regular-season champion in the No. 7 RPI conference (the SoCon), with a No. 28 RPI and a robust 44-15 overall record. The Bears are light on quality wins, with just a 1-4 record against Q1 opponents — that’s the reason they are on the bubble in the first place, instead of simply in the field easily. But at least they have a series win against Troy way back in Week One, and they won some nice series against solid SoCon foes, albeit not at-large or quad-one foes.
• There’s no easy answer here on the edge of the bubble, and UTSA, TCU, Pitt and Texas State all have solid arguments in their own right, but they also have warts. UTSA has a regular-season conference title and reached the American tournament finals, but mid-majors with RPIs outside the top 50 (UTSA is No. 51) don’t usually get the benefit of the doubt. TCU’s main selling point is a 17-13 record in the Big 12, but it went just 6-12 against Q1 and failed to win a single series against a regional team. Pitt has a better RPI (No. 39) and made a nice run to the ACC tournament semifinals to help make up for an 11-19 ACC regular-season record, but is a 14-20 aggregate conference mark good enough to sneak in? We like a lot of things about Pitt’s case, but ultimately we expect it will fall just short in the committee’s eyes. Finally, Texas State feels like a bit of a tweener case, with a No. 42 RPI coupled with a T-6 finish in the Sun Belt and a 6-11 record against Q1. There are some nice things on that resumé, but nothing that really stands out as a separator compared with the other teams in this mix. At least Mercer has a regular-season conference title in a good league as well as a robust RPI. Those feel like factors that can carry the day for the Bears at the end of this bubble. But any of these teams would be a valid selection, and it will be fascinating to see which way the committee falls.
— Aaron Fitt
On The Bubble
Field of 64
Final Edition
