Just doesn’t add up
One last bit on the NCAA baseball tournament BS, and I promise I’ll be done.
I’ve heard talk about how the NCAA was looking to make the seedings of the tourney field basically a 1-64 kind of thing. Examining that one, UC-Irvine, the host of the Irvine Regional and the #6 national seed, would stand to play the winner of a #27 vs. #38 matchup in the second round of a 64-team tournament.
The Virginia team seeded second in Irvine is #6 in the official NCAA RPI ratings released this morning, #7 in the Baseball America rankings, #9 in USA Today rankings, #13 in the Collegiate Baseball rankings, and they’d be #27 in this kind of rendering of a tourney field.
To put this in terms college basketball fans can understand, this UVa. team would be at absolute worst a #3 seed in one of the four regionals with that kind of pedigree, and could just as easily be on the door knocking at a #1 seed by virtue of being the ACC Tournament champions on top of everything else. And they fell to a #7 seed.
There was also talk that the 1-64 talk was bunk, and that the emphasis from the NCAA was on putting teams in regions based on geography and distance to travel to games. Um, well, there’s 3,000 miles that tells us that one isn’t at play here, but nice try.
One more bit of BS – the argument that Virginia’s strength of schedule is what held the Cavs back from not only hosting but also being one of the top eight national seeds. OK – UVa.’s SOS is 30th nationally, according to the warrennolan.com RPI. LSU had an SOS of 23, and got the #3 national seed. FSU’s SOS is 31 (!), and the Seminoles are a hosting #1 regional seed. (FSU was #14 in the RPI.) UC-Irvine’s SOS is 77 (and despite being #1 in the national rankings, Irvine is 18 in the RPI).
Louisville is #19 in the RPI and had a SOS ranking of #67. Louisville is a hosting #1 regional seed. Oklahoma is the #7 national seed, #17 in the RPI and #36 in SOS.
ECU is a host #1 regional seed, #23 RPI and #53 SOS.
See where I’m coming from? None of this adds up at all.
- Column by Chris Graham
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It’s an absolute joke. Hell they had the worst schedule in the ACC tourney as well, having to play four straight days, three days as the late game and then the championship game 13 hours after the previous game ended. FSU got a day off on Friday to rest their pitching staff. I hope UVa can channel what they did in the ACC tourney and stick it to the NCAA committee (who obviously has the collective IQ of a salad bar).
Virginia plays basically the same schedule as every other team in the conference does. Most every conference teams plays cream-puffs during the mid-week games. You just can’t get good teams to travel during the weekdays. There is just no way of explaining this PERIOD. The administration let this happen. Here are a few job openings in college baseball. Don’t be shocked if Coach O’Connor leaves after this season. He should go where the administration has his back!
“Virginia got royally screwed. You can quote me on that,” said Aaron Fitt, the lead college baseball writer for Baseball America. “It is unbelievable, frankly, on multiple levels.
“First of all, this is a team that won the ACC tournament. They won a total of 20 ACC games this year and only one team has won more counting the conference tournament and that is Florida State, and yet somehow they get shipped across the country.”
I agree again and we was 22-1 against our non-conference schedule, its not like we lost 3 or more against that, if we did I would understand but 22-1 is unreal and their best ever non-conference record. I brought up that in a post on rivals and compared it to others and saying no matter who you play and that u have won over 77% of your games, you deserve a bid at home.
I gotta tell you about the story of why we don’t play teams from California and Florida and Texas and Georgia. All 4 of those states have a huge advantage over every state out there in the USA. They want all the NCAA teams not to travel far because of the economy and long travel, we win against our competition and what happens that rule is broken, shipping us out west again to Irvine, CA.
Just write down all the teams you can think of in those 4 states and you will know what I am talking about with the non-conference unfairness and they say each team has to play a good schedule, seems unfair for to other states which certain states with less travel can play all they want.
GO HOOS!! Prove those doubters wrong and win the regional for the Generals fans here too.