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One Last Projection

I almost didn't do a projection this week; I may hold to that and not do any next year. When I started doing them however many years ago, there was actually some use to it, as the workings of the committee were more mysterious and I was basically the only one around other than a year-end Baseball America projection. These days, there are several of the fan sites that do them, and the committee is slightly less opaque than it used to be, so this becomes an exercise on getting as close as you can without having benefit of the final week of games.

What's more interesting, I think, is figuring out what the questions are that the committee is looking at and trying to guess what their answers will be. How much weight should the RPI be given? When should it be distrusted? Should any other rating systems be considered? How much weight should conference placement be given? How important are the last ten games? How important are the conference tournaments? Should credit be given for teams with difficult scheduling problems, like TCU or St. John's? Do you let some teams with sufficient budgets, like Fullerton or Arizona, travel east in the name of regional fairness?

While we're thinking about those, I'll throw out what I think the committee would do if they were choosing today, and try to recognize the hot points for games and teams to watch. I'm going to assume this year that all of the #1 seeds will host, so we can dispense with talking about that and get to the seeds.

The national #1 seeds:

#1 Rice (#1 RPI, #1 ISR)
#2 Vanderbilt (#3, #4)
#3 Texas (#2, #3)
#4 Arizona State (#5, #2)
#5 Florida State (#6, #7)
#6 North Carolina (#4, #9)
#7 Coastal Carolina (#7, #17)
#8 Long Beach State (#8, #5)

All of these will be jumbled by this week's results, so don't get too hung up on the current ordering. The top five are probably secure, the other three could easily drop off with a bad week. One interesting aspect to things is that if South Carolina and Coastal both win their conference tournaments or get close with the same number of losses, South Carolina will most likely pass Coastal in the RPI.

The rest of the #1 seeds:

Virginia (#12, #24)
Miami, Florida (#16, #34)
Texas A&M (#10, #10)
Missouri (#15, #12)
South Carolina (#9, #13)
Arkansas (#18, #19)
Louisiana-Lafayette (#13, #16)
San Diego (#11, #6)

There's a good bit of potential volatility here -- Arkansas has to right the ship a bit, having lost three straight weekend series; Miami and Missouri need to go 2-1 in pool play to hang on, I think; South Carolina, San Diego, or Virginia could move up with a sufficiently good week. If there's an exception to the idea of all the #1's hosting, it may be Missouri, depending on whether the committee focuses on accomplishment or facilities. It helps their case that most of the obvious alternatives, like Wichita State or Minnesota, have struggled lately. Although I'm trying to stay away from excessive snarkiness, it probably wouldn't be a bad thing for a team to get sent to Miami or whichever fourth-place ACC team gets to host.

The #2 seeds:

North Carolina State (#17, #35)
Clemson (#19, #30)
Wake Forest (#24, #51)
Georgia Tech (#28, #54)
Oklahoma (#25, #32)
Oklahoma State (#47, #27)
Nebraska (#26, #41)
Stetson (#31, #44)
UC Irvine (#29, #8)
Cal State Fullerton (#30, #18)
Southern Mississippi (#20, #26)
East Carolina (#27, #36)
Wichita State (#21, #23)
Arizona (#23, #11)
Mississippi State (#22, #25)
Mississippi (#14, #21)

You remember those questions we talked about earlier? Some of those are really important to those last two ACC teams, who could land anywhere between a #2 seed somewhere cushy like Myrtle Beach or could be at home next week. I don't necessarily see a fourth Western host site, which is actually a good thing under the current setup because it means that it's harder to slot all of the West into Western regionals. Oregon State's problems don't help, but having three Big West teams at this level or above may let one of them escape.

The #3's:

Baylor (#32, #40)
Kansas State (#37, #39)
Louisville (#41, #57)
Michigan (#40, #33)
Creighton (#44, #29)
Oral Roberts (#43, #42)
Texas Christian (#38, #22)
Oregon State (#34, #15)
Southern California (#42, #31)
UCLA (#45, #28)
College of Charleston (#33, #53)
Western Carolina (#36, #43)
Pepperdine (#35, #20)
North Carolina-Charlotte (#48, #47)
UC Riverside (#51, #14)
Cal Poly (#68, #37)

Now, completing this list is generally a waste of time, because two or three of these are going to be wiped out by surprise conference tournament winners from leagues that are going to get an at large, so you might as well go ahead and consider a couple of these as actually out and trying to get in. That's probably one of the Big East teams and maybe UCLA or USC West (who still has to clear .500 to keep it from being moot), as well as Minnesota below.

Finally:

St. John's (#49, #59)
Rutgers (#50, #68)
Minnesota (#54, #38)
America East winner
CAA winner
Horizon winner
Brown (#149, #159)
MAAC winner
MAC winner
MEAC winner
NEC winner
OVC winner
Lafayette (#133, #154)
Prairie View A&M (#202, #203)
Southland winner
WAC winner

Rather than keep returning to the subject of pitch counts and pitcher usage in general too often for my main theme, I'm just going to run a standard feature down here where I point out potential problems; feel free to stop reading above this if the subject doesn't interest you. This will just be a quick listing of questionable starts that have caught my eye -- the general threshold for listing is 120 actual pitches or 130 estimated, although short rest will also get a pitcher listed if I catch it. Don't blame me; I'm just the messenger.

(*) Pitch count is estimated. As always, I welcome actual pitch count corrections.

Boyd's World-> Breadcrumbs Back to Omaha-> One Last Projection

About the author, Boyd Nation