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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Chris Graham
