Baseball America, curiously, dropped UVA Baseball from its projected Field of 64, following its 12-8 loss to Boston College in the ACC Tournament early Thursday morning, replacing the ‘Hoos in the field with Notre Dame, which lost 5-4 to BC back on Tuesday.
This despite Virginia (32-18, 16-12 ACC) having an average computer rating of 41.8 – Notre Dame (32-21, 14-17 ACC) is at 48.7 in ACR.
For that matter, BA doesn’t even have Louisville (35-21, 15-16 ACC, ACR: 37.3) or Miami (31-24, 15-15 ACC, ACR: 47.3) anywhere near the bubble.
OK, so, I’m just a small-town bird lawyer here, but something about the Baseball America rendering doesn’t add up to me.
“If we are not selected for the NCAA Tournament, my opinion is, the committee is saying that we would have had to have won the league, that 16-11 isn’t good enough, that we would have had to go 18-9 in ACC play in the regular season. Well, had we done that, we would have won the regular-season title. So, if we’re not selected to the NCAA Tournament, the committee is, my opinion, sending them sending me a message that we would have had to won the regular season in the ACC, right?” Virginia coach Brian O’Connor said after the loss to Boston College in the ACC Tournament early Thursday morning.
Maybe O’Connor took some classes in bird law, too.
“I don’t know the history past my time here in this league, but there’s never been a team that’s five games above .500 in the regular season and does not get into the NCAA Tournament, you know. So, unfortunately, if we don’t get in, I think that sends a message, to our league as a whole, of what people think of this conference,” O’Connor said.
I’m starting to Brian O’Connor would make a pretty good bird lawyer, when it comes down to it.
Diving in to what the other side would have to say about Virginia’s case for an NCAA Tournament bid, the first knock on the resume is all about RPI, one of eight computer metrics in wide use.
Admittedly, we have no idea what the selection committee uses and doesn’t use to guide its decisions; for that matter, we don’t know from one year to the next who is even on the committee.
That said, RPI is the metric that is, by a lot, the least kind to Virginia, which is currently at 59 in the daily RPI.
That 59, though, is an outlier – the other algorithms have UVA at 26 (ELO), 35 (Massey and Sonny Moore), 44 (KPI, Priebe and Roundtable) and 47 (Boyd).
The other knock is strength of schedule, which is an odd one – you only control your non-conference schedule, which for Virginia ranked 238th (for reference: Notre Dame’s non-conference strength of schedule is 219th; Miami, which has more high-quality opportunities for its mid-week games from its base of operations in South Florida, is 84th).
Virginia’s ACC schedule, which it doesn’t control – you play who the league office tells you to play – wasn’t what it could have been because its road series at Florida State was canceled after a mass shooting on the FSU campus.
Even win one of those three, and the computer and strength-of-schedule numbers improve a good bit.
“There aren’t many teams that have done what we have done, you know, in the regular season, to go 16-11 in ACC play. I don’t care what other metrics you look at, we were a game-and-a-half away from winning the league, and you know, other than tonight, we’ve been one of the hottest teams out there,” O’Connor said.
“These young men have, you know, had their backs against the wall the last four or five weeks, and they stood up and certainly made a case,” O’Connor said. “I think we got one heck of a ball club. That wasn’t reflected tonight, you know, but that’s the sport of baseball. So, my opinion about it is, this is 16-11 in the regular season, right? We can’t do anything about that. A series on the road, there’s a big RPI weekend was canceled. We can’t do anything about that.”
Virginia is going to be a three seed somewhere next week, and just sayin’, I wouldn’t want to be the two or one in that regional.
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Chris Graham
