Boyd's World-> Breadcrumbs Back to Omaha-> Gonna Hold My Own Tournament, So There

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Gonna Hold My Own Tournament, So There

Maybe someday I won't have to do this (OK, I suppose I don't have to do it now, but you know what I mean), but here's my annual last dip into what should be rather than what is. There are some signs of hope, as the committee becomes more diverse and better educated, but I don't think the real field will look much like this in a couple of weeks. For those of you who just joined us this year, this is my annual fantasy field, the one that I would draw up if I were in charge and the season were over today.

  1 Rice                           16 Missouri
 32 Kansas State                   17 Coastal Carolina
 34 Minnesota                      48 Washington
214 Southern                       49 College of Charleston

  2 Long Beach State               15 Louisiana-Lafayette
 31 East Carolina                  18 Arkansas
 35 Oklahoma                       47 Georgia Tech
175 Stony Brook                    56 North Carolina-Charlotte

  3 Arizona State                  13 South Carolina
 30 Clemson                        19 Texas Christian
 33 Southern Mississippi           46 Baylor
174 Brown                          57 Louisville

  4 Vanderbilt                     14 Cal State Fullerton
 29 Creighton                      21 Mississippi State
 36 Michigan                       45 Oral Roberts
163 Monmouth                       62 Texas-San Antonio

  5 Texas                          12 Arizona
 28 UCLA                           20 UC Riverside
 37 Cal Poly                       43 Gonzaga
158 Lafayette                      67 Fresno State

  6 San Diego                      11 Florida State
 27 Virginia                       22 Pepperdine
 38 Stetson                        44 Kentucky
154 Bethune-Cookman                68 Central Michigan

  7 Texas A&M                      10 North Carolina
 26 Mississippi                    23 Oklahoma State
 39 North Carolina State           42 Western Carolina
138 LeMoyne                        85 Austin Peay State

  8 UC Irvine                       9 Oregon State
 25 Southern California            24 Wichita State
 40 Miami, Florida                 41 Nebraska
117 Virginia Commonwealth         111 Illinois-Chicago

• I swear, you rail for years against all the Western teams getting stuck with each other so only one of them can advance, and then you go and create an Arizona-Riverside-Gonzaga-Fresno regional. The difference, of course, is that the one I've got listed here contains an actual legitimate 1/2/3/4 seed, instead of 3 #1's and #2, and this one grew out of an actual reasoned process rather than intent. You've also got the coincidental Irvine-Oregon State pairing, which would be pretty good.

• As usual, there are some really good matchups that naturally fall in around the #1/#2 boundary. I love the Louisiana-Lafayette/Arkansas matchup, and I think Missouri and Coastal Carolina would be a fun comparison between a second-tier top conference team and the best mid-major team (unless you want to count the WCC as mid-major, but that's a different discussion.

• One accidental feature that I like is that the two unproven but potentially good ACC teams currently at #10 and #11 get to play the two probably good but suspect because of conference affiliation or standing teams to settle the issue, at least as much as you can in a three-game series. One of the things that I'm resolved to do this year is to be less certain in my writing. That's because, although I think resolution makes for better writing, it makes for lousy analysis -- one of the basic tenets of my work is that there's a range of uncertainty that we can't get better than given the number of data points that we have to work with. I'm just about sure that Florida State is not the best team in the country. I strongly suspect that San Diego is better than them, but that just means that if the two played 100 games at a neutral site, I think San Diego would win 54 of them. That's not a huge edge, and I can't even be sure that it exists, so it behooves me to write with a bit less certainty. I won't always be able to hold to that in the face of bad placements, but I'll do my best.

This means absolutely nothing, ignore it.

This is one generic layman's predictions for who gets in the tournament. I'm not going to bother picking a team from the one-bid conferences, since the conference tournament will just be a crapshoot, but if I only list one team from a conference, they'll get an at large bid if they don't get the automatic bid.

America East    Florida State         St. John's            Oregon State
Atlantic 10     Virginia              Coastal Carolina      Southern California
CAA             Clemson               Minnesota             UCLA
Horizon         Miami, Florida        Michigan              Vanderbilt
Brown           North Carolina State  Long Beach State      South Carolina
MAAC            Georgia Tech          UC Irvine             Mississippi
MAC             Wake Forest           Cal State Fullerton   Arkansas
MEAC            Stetson               UC Riverside          Mississippi State
Mid-Continent   Texas                 Rice                  Florida
NEC             Texas A&M             East Carolina         Louisiana State
OVC             Missouri              Southern Mississippi  College of Charleston
Southland       Nebraska              Wichita State         Western Carolina
Lafayette       Kansas State          Creighton             Louisiana-Lafayette
SWAC            Oklahoma State        Texas Christian       San Diego
WAC             Louisville            Arizona State         Pepperdine
North Carolina  Rutgers               Arizona               Gonzaga

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-> Gonna Hold My Own Tournament, So There

About the author, Boyd Nation