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Is It Getting Better?

Publication Date: April 19, 2005

I was thinking about the tournament the other day -- I seem to be doing that more these days than I used to, which is an interesting case of my readers shaping my thinking rather than the other way around -- and it occurred to me that a lot of the problems I used to write about in the selection process aren't as bad as they used to be. The RPI still honks, and that by itself throws off the seeding and placement process rather badly at times, but as far as the all-important question of who gets in and who doesn't even get a chance goes, the issues of unearned bids for cold-weather teams and exclusion of mid-level major conference teams have gotten steadily better. In order to test this thought, I threw together the following chart showing the errors (for my value of "error" anyway; these are loosely ISR-based) for the years of the 64-team tournament:

Year   # Wrong   In Wrong   Out Wrong
 
1999   5   North Carolina State, Notre Dame, Creighton, Virginia Commonwealth, Rutgers   Missouri, Arizona State, Georgia Tech, Hawaii, Washington
 
2000   7   Seton Hall, Old Dominion, Notre Dame, Evansville, Creighton, Penn State, Minnesota   Kentucky, Georgia, Pepperdine, Long Beach State, Tennessee, Mississippi, Oklahoma State
 
2001   8   Stetson, Florida International, Virginia Commonwealth, Georgia Southern, Jacksonville, Winthrop, South Florida, Rutgers   UCLA, Cal State Northridge, San Jose State, Oregon State, San Diego, Arizona, Cal Poly, Alabama
 
2002   5   South Florida, Elon, Florida Atlantic, Tulane, Florida International   Mississippi, Texas A&M, Oklahoma State, Oregon State, Northwestern State
 
2003   5   Rutgers, North Carolina-Wilmington, Stetson, East Carolina, Southwest Missouri State   Texas-Arlington, Nevada, California, Texas Christian, Oklahoma State
 
2004   7   George Mason, Birmingham-Southern, Middle Tennessee State, St. John's, College of Charleston, Missouri, Central Florida   Oregon State, San Diego, Nebraska, Loyola Marymount, UC Riverside, Washington State, Auburn

Despite my optimism, the raw numbers of bad bids haven't changed much over the years. For all that the West Coast teams justifiable anger is misaimed at the SEC (I can't imagine how bad that's going to get if ten SEC teams do manage to get in this year, and you could actually make a legitimate case for eleven at the moment), the biggest problem continues to be RPI-based bids for mid-major Southeastern conferences -- last year was especially bad with five of them. The one source of optimism, though, is that we're essentially down to a single cause now. Assuming that the .500 rule is going to stay, the single remaining campaign issue for those of us who care is that the RPI has to go.

Tournament Watch

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  Brigham Young         Coastal Carolina     Alabama
A10           Oral Roberts          Long Beach State     Auburn
Big East      Miami, Florida        Cal State Fullerton  Vanderbilt
CAA           Florida State         Cal Poly             Tennessee
Horizon       North Carolina        Oregon State         Mississippi State
MAAC          North Carolina State  Stanford             Northwestern State
MAC           Georgia Tech          Arizona State        Wichita State
MEAC          Clemson               Washington           East Carolina
Ivy           Central Florida       Arizona              Tulane
NEC           Texas                 Southern California  Southern Mississippi
OVC           Texas A&M             California           Texas Christian
Patriot       Nebraska              Louisiana State      College of Charleston
SWAC          Texas Tech            Mississippi          Georgia Southern
Rice          Baylor                South Carolina       Pepperdine
Nevada        Missouri              Florida              San Francisco
Illinois      Winthrop              Arkansas             Louisiana-Lafayette

Pitch Count Watch

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.

Date   Team   Pitcher   Opponent   IP   H   R   ER   BB   SO   AB   BF   Pitches
April 10 Wofford Austin Redwine Davidson 9.0 9 2 2 6 3 36 42 121
April 10 North Carolina-Wilmington Moore George Mason 9.0 6 0 0 3 8 34 37 138
April 14 San Diego State Alex Hinsha Brigham Young 9.0 6 4 2 3 12 33 38 148(*)
April 15 Elon Matt Chastain Georgia Southern 8.0 4 4 2 3 4 30 35 128
April 15 Georgia Southern Everett Teaford Elon 7.0 4 4 3 3 11 26 31 124
April 15 Troy Landon Brazell Georgia State 7.0 11 7 6 2 7 31 33 142
April 15 Gardner-Webb Zach Ward Jacksonville 9.0 10 4 1 2 9 34 36 133(*)
April 15 Ohio D. Witt Marshall 9.0 10 3 0 0 8 39 39 151(*)
April 15 Duke Greg Burke Maryland 9.0 8 1 0 1 9 35 37 139
April 15 Western Kentucky Daniel Faulkner Middle Tennessee State 7.2 11 6 6 4 6 32 36 141(*)
April 15 Oklahoma State Blake Kronkosky Missouri 8.0 7 2 2 2 8 30 33 123
April 15 Nicholls State Mark Fernandez McNeese State 7.0 8 5 4 4 4 28 32 124
April 15 McNeese State Marceaux Nicholls State 9.0 7 3 2 1 7 33 35 121
April 15 Purdue Scott Byrnes Northwestern 8.0 8 3 3 4 9 30 35 123
April 15 Grambling State Darrell Prairie View A&M 8.1 13 8 6 5 3 34 42 140(*)
April 15 Cal Poly Garrett Olson UC Davis 8.0 6 3 2 4 8 30 35 130
April 15 Central Florida Tim Bascom Belmont 9.0 7 2 2 0 8 35 35 131
April 15 Virginia Tech Ryan Kennedy Virginia Commonwealth 9.0 9 1 1 2 3 31 35 122
April 16 Northern Illinois Adam Holdenrid Bowling Green State 9.0 7 2 2 3 8 31 38 141(*)
April 16 Georgia Southern Josh Lairsey Elon 9.0 7 1 0 4 10 34 39 135
April 16 Louisiana Tech Clayton Meyer Fresno State 9.0 5 2 2 5 6 32 39 131
April 16 George Mason Stacen Gant Hofstra 9.0 5 3 2 2 10 32 36 143(*)
April 16 Western Kentucky Grady Hinchman Middle Tennessee State 9.0 5 1 1 6 8 32 38 151(*)
April 16 Oklahoma State Thomas Cowley Missouri 7.0 9 4 4 2 4 30 32 135
April 16 Grambling State Marshal Demetrius Prairie View A&M 7.0 3 1 1 8 10 23 33 145(*)
April 16 Austin Peay State Rowdy Hardy Southeast Missouri State 9.0 11 6 6 3 9 36 40 148
April 16 Massachusetts Matt Torra St. Joseph's 10.2 3 4 1 2 16 34 39 143(*)
April 16 St. Louis Ryan Bird Southern Mississippi 6.2 4 1 1 3 7 24 30 126
April 16 Cal Poly Jimmy Shull UC Davis 9.0 5 0 0 3 9 30 33 128
April 16 Virginia Tech Jake Chaney Virginia Commonwealth 8.2 8 4 4 1 8 33 35 128
April 16 Yale Mike Mongiardini Harvard 7.0 3 2 2 4 6 24 31 127
April 17 Kansas Kodiak Quick Baylor 8.1 5 3 3 2 5 27 32 130
April 17 Dayton Kaleb Thompson LaSalle 8.0 9 2 2 4 7 32 37 148(*)
April 17 Ohio State Trent Luyster Michigan State 8.1 11 6 5 1 4 34 35 125
April 17 Nevada-Las Vegas Derek Rodriguez Utah 9.0 9 3 3 4 4 33 40 141
April 17 North Carolina A&T J. Primus Delaware State 8.0 10 6 6 4 3 32 38 141(*)
April 17 Fairleigh Dickinson Brian Bunyan Quinnipiac 6.0 7 9 7 5 12 27 34 151(*)
April 17 Texas A&M-Corpus Christi Trey Hearne Centenary 9.0 15 6 4 2 9 40 45 156(*)
April 17 Wagner Mike Bujalkowski Long Island 9.0 5 0 0 2 8 30 32 122
April 17 Yale Jon Hollis Harvard 6.1 12 10 6 2 4 30 33 124
April 18 Utah Valley State Kyle Tash Brigham Young 9.0 13 4 3 3 6 35 39 136(*)
April 19 Texas Christian Brad Furnish Baylor 8.0 4 1 1 3 4 27 31 125
April 19 Chicago State Robert Vargas Northern Illinois 5.0 4 5 3 11 6 20 33 148(*)
April 19 Sacred Heart Milazzo Manhattan 7.0 8 8 6 4 4 26 33 121
April 19 Air Force Paul Pratt Northern Colorado 6.2 7 6 6 7 5 26 33 156
April 19 St. Francis Lepore Fordham 9.0 7 4 2 7 4 30 38 132(*)
April 20 Villanova Nate Hall LaSalle 8.0 5 1 1 3 3 28 34 125

The Moore and Redwine counts are corrections based on actual counts.

(*) Pitch count is estimated.

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Boyd's World-> Breadcrumbs Back to Omaha-> Is It Getting Better? About the author, Boyd Nation