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Baseball Update: Pac 12 and National - Printable Version

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Baseball Update: Pac 12 and National - CTcard - 05-22-2017

Most conferences wrapped up the regular season this past weekend, and now head to conference tournaments. The Pac 12 doesn't play a tournament, so everyone but OSU has one series left. OSU will win the conference by at least six games, and is easily the #1 team in the country. Stanford is currently in second with UCLA one game back (of Stanford) in third, Arizona three games back in fourth, and no one else able to catch or tie Stanford.

Stanford finishes up with a Thursday through Saturday set at WSU.
WSU is 10-17 in conference and ninth. They were coming around recently, before they ran into the juggernaut Beavs and got swept in Corvallis. Before that they had won their past four series, taking two of three from UW, Utah, Oregon, and UCLA.

[As an aside, OSU's situation this weekend is kind  of interesting. Since there are 11 baseball teams in the conference, everyone is off Pac 12 play for one weekend. OSU has the final weekend, a hard time to find an opponent given the tournaments. The Beavs will have a four game series versus Abilene Christian, which is apparently one of a handful of teams ineligible for postseason play - in their case it seems to be connected to just moving up to division 1 this year. ]

The various rankings are coming out.

Because of the cal series running Saturday - Monday, Stanford had five games this past week, going 4-1 with the loss in that cal game.
That makes Stanford 18-2 in the past 20.
This hot streak has been without Alex Dunlap (starting catcher out since April 14), half without Mikey Diekroger (starting third basemen out since May 5), and of course all season without expected staff ace Tristan Beck.

Stanford is back to #11 in RPI (a week ago they had dropped from 11 to 13)
Stanford #9 in Baseball America (was #9)
Stanford #8 in USA Today Coaches Poll (was #10)
Stanford #10 in D1baseball.com  (was #11)
No update yet in NCBWA poll. (was #11)

With a view towards getting a national seed (top 8), Stanford needs to win as many as possible
Five of the national seeds are probably basically set with Oregon State, North Carolina, Florida, Texas Tech and Louisville.
Other teams in the running, and thus worth cheering against include: LSU, TCU, Kentucky, Virginia, Wake Forest, Southern Mississippi and Long Beach. Clemson still has a strong RPI (#8) but they have been stumbling lately and wouldn't seem likely to get a national seed.

At this point I still think Stanford is unlikely to get a top 8 national seed, but it would seem more likely than not they'll host a regional (top 16).

As is usually the case, the top of the RPI is dominated by the ACC and SEC.
Six of the top sixteen are ACC.
Four of the top fourteen are SEC.

Re: Baseball Update: Pac 12 and National - StanfordMatt - 05-22-2017

For what it's worth, the writers at D1Baseball.com have OSU, UNC, TTU, UF, TCU, L'ville and LSU as locks for top 8 seeds. They say the race for the last spot is down to Stanford, Kentucky and Southern Miss.

Re: Baseball Update: Pac 12 and National - CTcard - 05-22-2017

(05-22-2017, 01:54 PM)StanfordMatt link Wrote:For what it's worth, the writers at D1Baseball.com have OSU, UNC, TTU, UF, TCU, L'ville and LSU as locks for top 8 seeds. They say the race for the last spot is down to Stanford, Kentucky and Southern Miss.

I have seen others list LSU as a lock as well, and for all I know it is true. While not unreasonable as a national seed, lock would seem too strong to me from what I have seen. Their non-conference record is notably non-special (17-8, #39 non-conference RPI). They have done well in league play (21-9, tops in SEC West, second only by head to head tie breaker in SEC overall).

TCU I don't know so much. Would have helped if cal could have taken another from them this past weekend (cal should have won Saturday).



Re: Baseball Update: Pac 12 and National - JJJ - 05-22-2017

I figured it was ok to post this video tribute to 9 here. From Stanford Baseball on facebook.

I believe it aired during the games over the weekend, although maybe not in its entirety.

http://www.facebook.com/stanfordbaseball/videos/10155367306314766/

Re: Baseball Update: Pac 12 and National - CTcard - 05-25-2017

(05-22-2017, 01:54 PM)StanfordMatt link Wrote:They say the race for the last spot is down to Stanford, Kentucky and Southern Miss.

Well as of games through 5/24, Stanford is up to #9 in RPI on the NCAA site.

Southern Miss is down to 11 as they lost the opener of the Conference USA tournament to UTSA.
They then won game #2 today.

Kentucky moved up to #6 in RPI as they beat South Carolina to start the SEC tournament. They play LSU in an hour.
LSU is RPI #7, also up one spot.