2024 college baseball/softball thread

I'm not trying to defend Florida, because that record is really hard to do, but they are 30th in RPI.

Would I rather see College of Charleston at 41-14, which won its league but lost 6-4 to the No. 2 seed in the tourney final, be in? Yes, and their RPI is 42.

Is TCU better at 33-21 with an RPI of 39?

 

RPI can be manipulated, especially in leagues where you don't play everyone but get to figure everyone in your RPI. Winning games can't. Florida only won 28 games, had a losing conference record, a pretty below-average OOC record for an at-large selection, with losses to the only P5 teams they played OOC, and went 0-1 in its conference tourney.

 

FWIW, Florida played 11 out of a possible 13 teams in its conference. I'm not sure how much a series against Alabama and Auburn would have changed it.

 

Power 5 is not a thing in baseball. Full stop.

 

If they had lost two of three to both, they'd have been under .500 overall. Might have been hard to take any team with a losing overall record as an at-large selection.
One of the talking heads on the selection show was arguing that they should expand the field to 72 teams and begin the tournament with best-of-three series. Survivors, I presume, move to what we now call the regionals. At least I think that's what he was proposing.
It's quaint that some believe expansion would help teams like the College of Charleston. Adding eight spots would only mean eight more spots for the SEC and ACC and perhaps the Big 12.

 

I live about 50 minutes from Santa Barbara, and with an NCAA regional fairly near, I'm thinking of taking in a game or two. Not having been to any of these, are tickets to these games a particularly tough get? (Obviously, it depends on the site). Would I need to get them ahead of time?

 

I think the Gauchos' park only seats about 1,000.

 

I just found out that one of the Birmingham Southern players is the kid in this video, shot when his father played for the White Sox. Pretty good if you've never seen it.

 

The ACC, SEC, Pac-12 and Big 12 are the top conferences in college baseball. They are P5 universities.

 

Guess who was key to them advancing …

Adam LaRoche and his son

 

I don't disagree with you. Now good luck convincing Cliff Godwin of East Carolina. The rants he would go on talking about what Power 5 schools got that ECU didn't went on for years. It seems like he has backed down from that stance.

But still, ECU had no business being a regional host. Wake Forest, which is the No. 2 seed in Greenville, and Duke had better cases.

 

Kind of depends on the school, the venue, and the other teams playing. The home team games are often tough tickets, but the others should have plenty of good seats available. San Diego might have enough fans to make a relatively short trip.