NCAA regionals.

[patdog]

Not much love for the SEC. A&M didn't get a national seed despite being a top 8 team in RPI and in every poll. Bama and Mizzou get left out, while Oregon gets a bid despite a 60+ RPI and a weak schedule. Southern Miss gets left out despite a strong finish. I think A&M and Bama have legitimate complaints. Mizzou and USM, not so much.

 

[8dog]

Bama never had a chance

Tamu and vandy have legit
Complaints

Om got the regional
Draw of death.

 

[57stratdawg]

Yeah tough draw for OM. Even if they somehow slip by UCLA, they have to go right back out there for the Supers.

 

[patdog]

Om got the regional
Draw of death.

Every regional was going to be the draw of death for Mississippi. Which is why I never really cared if they made the tournament or not. Although I'd sure as hell have liked to have taken a few games from them to keep them at home.

 

[maroonmania]

So only 7 SEC teams get bids with several other SEC teams with legitimate cases and better RPIs than some other teams that did make it. What this tells me is that the NCAA committee is giving the SEC teams the benefit of the doubt less and less in order to "spread the wealth". Been a while since the NCAA has left out an SEC team with 15 SEC wins. Bottom line is that it looks like it might be even that much tougher for Cohen to get us turned around enough in one year to get back in a regional.

 

[patdog]

Missouri can thank their out of conference schedule for getting left out. It makes ours look good. Boyd does a preseason ranking of each team's intended strength of schedule. Our was #30. Missouri's was #53. The strong message here is you'd damn well better schedule a decent OOC schedule if you want to catch any breaks from the committee. Of course, Alabama tells us you'd better at least get close to .500 in your league too.

Edit: But yeah, the overall tournament shows us that just being in the best conference in the country isn't going to get you any favors from the selection committee. They went out of their way to screw SEC teams.

 

[57stratdawg]

I felt like the SEC was very top heavy this year. Florida, Vandy, LSU, and Texas AM were the headliners and then there was a big gap to the next team. It's tough to make the case that the conference is incredibly deep (10 bids) when it gets too top heavy.

 

[patdog]

Good point. The SEC's showing in the tournament last year, when only 2 teams out of 10 that made the tournament made it to a super regional, probably didn't help the teams on the bubble much either.

 

[WayboDawg]

Not much love for the SEC. A&M didn't get a national seed despite being a top 8 team in RPI and in every poll. Bama and Mizzou get left out, while Oregon gets a bid despite a 60+ RPI and a weak schedule. Southern Miss gets left out despite a strong finish. I think A&M and Bama have legitimate complaints. Mizzou and USM, not so much.

Southern crapped the bed going 1-2 in a laughable C-USA tournament that they hosted. The only decent team (Rice) got put out early, so there was no excuse for not winning it. They had one of the easiest schedules they have ever had but still couldnt manage 40 wins despite the strong regular season finish.

 

[amcdan2000]

Vandy has the easiest regional to me. I was suprised about pairings. I thought the point of the 4 team regional was to keep teams close. There are a lot of teams travelling far. I'm sure ESPN won't say TSUN fans mortgaged their doublewides to get there.

 

[I_Love_My_Mommy]

What about Memphis getting left out?

 

[DAWG61]

Not much love for the SEC. A&M didn't get a national seed despite being a top 8 team in RPI and in every poll. Bama and Mizzou get left out, while Oregon gets a bid despite a 60+ RPI and a weak schedule. Southern Miss gets left out despite a strong finish. I think A&M and Bama have legitimate complaints. Mizzou and USM, not so much.

Southern Miss got left out of the SEC too

 

[tatedog]

Missouri can thank their out of conference schedule for getting left out. It makes ours look good. Boyd does a preseason ranking of each team's intended strength of schedule. Our was #30. Missouri's was #53. The strong message here is you'd damn well better schedule a decent OOC schedule if you want to catch any breaks from the committee. Of course, Alabama tells us you'd better at least get close to .500 in your league too.

Edit: But yeah, the overall tournament shows us that just being in the best conference in the country isn't going to get you any favors from the selection committee. They went out of their way to screw SEC teams.

In a way, you can also thank their conference schedule for having them left out. Road series against A&M, LSU, Vandy; home series vs Florida. That's almost half of the conference schedule leaving very little room for error with the rest. Ole Miss also drew all 4 of the national seed contenders and they went 15-14 in the league, which is pretty much what Missouri did, save for the one rain out Ole Miss had vs A&M. Ole Miss is a 2 seed, and Missouri (who was a one run loss from sweeping Ole Miss) is left out. That doesn't make much sense to me.

eta: not that I was expecting the selections to make much sense since the process is 50% geographical political correctness now.