Life in the Valley

State Goes from Projected Host to 2-seed in #2 National Seed Regional

“Life is about growth. People are not perfect when they’re 21 years old.” – Bill Walton (RIP, Big Red).

The now late, great Bill Walton was right, you know. No one at a young age is perfect. Not even high-level college baseball players. Through a 56-game (or so) regular season and a conference tournament, there are bound to be obstacles and some adversity.

But according to the Committee that selects the regional hosts, seeding, and at-large teams for the NCAA Baseball Tournament, you’d better not have those imperfections late in the season, because they will cost you more than anything else in your body of work, or maybe … they won’t.

That’s about all I can take away from the Committee not only swiping a regional from Indiana State, with an RPI of 10, and giving one to East Carolina, with an RPI of 22 (ECU’s RPI dropped 6 spots in the last week), and then adding insult to injury by placing Indiana State as the 2-seed in Kentucky’s Regional this weekend. Kentucky is the #2 overall seed. The Committee doesn’t seed below 16, and the main reason for that I’ve always felt is so they can limit travel distances for some schools and not have to delineate who is actually on what would-be seed line if you take them 1-64. Most years, it doesn’t matter much.

This year, it does. Indiana State as the 2-seed in Kentucky’s Regional, if you worked the seeding out, would mean the Sycamores are the #31-seeded team. Because if the NCAA did seed all the way down to 64, the #2 national seed’s regional should have the 2, 31, 34, and 63 seeds. In basketball terms, the Committee is telling you without telling you that Indiana State is the 2nd-worst 8-seed if we’re comparing it to the March Madness bracket model. Again, I understand it’s not done that way, but the message is poor.

This is made worse by the fact that the NCAA is advertising this tournament with a bracket! Like that’s how they seeded it! If Indiana State isn’t hosting, and say you put them behind Duke for you know whats and giggles, then Indiana State would be the 18-seed, and they should be the 2-seed in Corvallis, at the Oregon State Regional. UC-Irvine got that spot, instead, currently ranked 14th in the D1Baseball.com Top 25, with an RPI of 27 ) (all RPI information as contained at D1Baseball.com), but it’s long been thought that West Coast teams get a bit of a shaft when it comes to RPI and I tend to agree.

But let’s get back to our main topic. ECU ended up drawing the #16 national seed, hosting in Greenville, N.C., against Wake Forest, VCU, and Evansville – the MVC Tournament champs head east once again in their first trip to Regionals since 2006, when they made the final of the Charlottesville Regional before bowing out to South Carolina.

I’ll have more on Evansville’s seed and region later here on the blog.

Matt Hogue, Chairman of the D1 Baseball Committee told ESPN during the Selection Show this afternoon what factors they considered when discussing the final couple regional host sites.

So in short, the factors were:

• Common Opponents
• Success in Conference
• Series Wins
• Consistency Throughout Season

So let’s look at how each team stacks up in those categories:

• Common Opponents: This was tricky. No team appeared on all 3 schedules. So the records here indicate opponents who appeared on at least 2 of the 3 schedules. This skews toward ECU and Duke, given their geographical proximity and that of their likely non-conference opponents, especially in the midweek (more on that this week, too): ECU 12-2 (.857); Indiana State 4-2 (.667); Duke 8-6 (.571). Note: Duke beat ECU once head-to-head.
• Conference Record: ISU 22-5 (.815); 1st place; lost tournament final; ECU 19-8 (.704); 1st place; didn’t make AAC tournament final; Duke 16-14 (.533); 3rd ACC Coastal; won ACC Tournament.
• Series Win/Loss (3 games): ISU 11-1 (.917); ECU 11-3 (.786); Duke 7-5 (.583).
• Consistency Through Season: Duke’s longest losing streak this season was 3 games. ECU’s was 5, toward the end of the season. Indiana State’s was 3, early to Vandy and Southern Miss. The Sycamores didn’t lose back-to-back games after April 5. But the Committee doesn’t tell us what this metric actually means. Losing streaks, or lack there of, tell me a team is consistent or not. But we don’t know how the Committee judged that.

So based on all this, ECU has an edge on common opponents, though Indiana State had far fewer chances in this consideration due to geography. Indiana State is solidly ahead in conference record, though Duke was in a tougher league than either ISU or ECU. Wining the ACC Tournament should have helped their cause, but it didn’t. Series wins are Indiana State’s forte and the numbers show that. In terms of consistency, Indiana State hasn’t had a losing streak in nearly 2 months. Seems pretty consistent to me.

It’s hard to look at all this and come up with the same decision the Committee did of having ECU as a host. At least, there isn’t an overwhelming avalanche of evidence to support it. Maybe it’s brand name, maybe it’s facilities, I have no idea. Terre Haute showed last year it could put on a successful regional so there shouldn’t be any concern there. But we’ll probably never get a straight answer from the Committee, which is a shame.

This Weekend on Valley Diamonds: NCAA Regionals kick off on Friday. Here’s the schedule for Valley teams. Regionals are double elimination.

Greenville Regional: #4 Evansville vs. #1 East Carolina, Noon, ESPN+.
Lexington Regional: #2 Indiana State vs. #3 Illinois, 6 p.m. Central, ESPN+