I’m bored and nothing going on at work this morning so…
National seeds/Super hosts:
Wake Forest. Is the ACC as good as the SEC? No. Is it probably the #2 conference? Yes. And Wake is the only team in the country with fewer than 10 losses.
Vandy
LSU
Arkansas. LSU is only above us because they won the series at the Box, and because of a couple of midweek hiccups like Lipscomb and Misery State (although Vandy and LSU have had their own hiccups). If we wind up as SEC champs this would change. I could see us moving up to the 2 line if we win the two remaining series.
Poultry
Kentucky
Duke
Indiana State. Larry Bird’s school has wins over Vandy, Indiana, Purdue and Illinois and plays Misery next week before the season ending series at the Bad Uni Bears. They’ve won 12 straight.
Regional hosts:
9. Boston College
10. Virginia
11. Coastal Carolina
12. Stanford
13. Florida
14. UConn
15. West Virginia
16. Campbell
Which would pair us with the Wallets in the super. Nothing new. We’ve had home supers with the Poultry and Rebnecks in recent years.
Didn’t go straight RPI obviously. I’m guessing the committee will want to reward UConn, WVU and Campbell for winning their leagues (assuming they do), and the ACC is hit as a result, since Clemson and Miami are top-16 RPI right now. They also like to spread the regionals around if they can and UConn and WVU are outside the normal June footprint.
All subject to change in the next 21 days, of course.
A couple of strength of schedule notes:
Kentucky is currently the #1 SOS. They are expected to stay there.
We are currently 12th, but playing SoCar and Vandy is likely to pull us up to #5.
Clemson is the #3 SOS, which could lead to them hosting anyway in spite of the reason for my predictions above.
While I see that (it would be an impressive last three weeks), I believe if we go 3-3 in the final two series, we’ll have done pretty well…getting to a 20 win SEC season.
You could be right. I’m just trying to read the committee’s mind. Nobody in the Big Ten or Notre Dame is good enough for a national seed, or even to host, so the Sycamores are the only Midwestern candidate. And the committee likes to spread regionals around.
I like our chances of getting 20 wins. I predicted 18-20 about 3 weeks ago with 19 or 20 being more likely in my opinion than 18. That’s looking pretty good right now. Win 2 of 3 at home against USC and just one against Vandy & we’re at 20. It’s nice to only need one win out of 6 games to get to 18 SEC wins. It’s also nice that we’ve seem to caught USC in something of a slump. They were looking very good a few weeks ago. That might have had more to do with their schedule than the way they were playing, but nonetheless, they’ve slid quite a bit since mid-April.
I’m confident we get a national seed with 18 wins. Anything over that just moves us up in the pecking order. I know it’s merely coincidence, but the overall #1 seed hasn’t won it all in several years. For that superstitious reason, I’d like to climb no higher than #2 in the seeding. It’ll be hard to pass Vandy, anyway, since we play them in Nashville. I have no idea if we can pass Wake. LSU might slide a little because they’ve been hit with some pitching injuries.