https://weather.com/weather/tenday/l/At … A0027:1:US
nothing less than 80%
NWS is a little better but not much. Chances are 70-70-60 for Thursday-Friday-Saturday. But there are still three days to change the forecast.
I wouldn’t mind if Blaine Knight beats them Thursday night and then the rest of the series gets rained out.
i agree with that…just have to see if anything changes in the next day or two.
The irony is that both teams are probably helped by a rainout of the entire series. At least I think they’d be. That’s especially true if several other SEC games meet the same fate. UF has already clinched the title. We’re 1 full game ahead of OM. I don’t know for sure but I don’t think we’d lose that if we played 3 fewer games. It might if they swept Bama. Regardless, I don’t think such an event would hurt us with the NCAA committee. I’d much rather play & win, but given our road record, UGA’s strength, & the health of our team, well, I think we’d still get a top 4-5 seed getting rained out. If we get swept or even lose the series 2-1, we are still likely a top 8 seed, but perhaps not as high.
I think if we won the series 1-0, we win. We’d have a .642 win percentage; OM would be .633 at best. We’d be tied in the games behind column, but I think winning percentage would trump the OM tiebreaker of winning the series. Either way, we’d be seeded into Wednesday as one of the top four records. There is still a way we’d fall outside the four top SEC records and have to play on Tuesday, but it would require a Georgia sweep and an LSU sweep or a South Carolina sweep.
I think if all games are rained out, we would maintain a top 8 seed.
Certainly there would be no reason to downgrade us any. Our RPI is #5 today in the official NCAA list, which is pretty close to Warren Nolan’s list. Georgia is #4 today after losing the series to Florida. I think we’d be a top 8 seed even if UGa swept us, but we’d need to do some damage in Hoover to cement the position. If we lost 2 of 3, I think we’d only drop 1 place.
Forecast for Tuscaloosa isn’t much better: 70-60-50 for weekend according to NWS. So, Ole Miss might get in a double-dip on Saturday after rainouts on Thursday and Friday.
Doesn’t LSU play at Auburn this weekend? You can bet the forecast there is about what it is for Tuscaloosa & Athens. I think LSU probably needs some wins to cement any shot at getting into the NCAA. They’ve been horrendous on the road. I’d like to see Auburn sweep the corndogs. Or at least win however many games they play. It’d tickle me if LSU had to stay home this season. And by “stay home” I don’t mean playing in Alex Box. I mean watching on TV.
If we win one game in Athens, we’re golden for a top 8 seed. I think there’s as good a chance that we move up a slot or stay the same as there is that we drop at all, should we just win one of the 3 games (assuming all 3 are played). Such is the impact of winning against a top 5 RPI on the road. And our SOS will end up being top 3 or 4 because of who and where we are playing (and their SOS). Of the teams with SOS above ours, #2 N. Carolina will take a hit playing 3 games vs. Virginia Tech (#137) at home; Wake forest (#4) is home for a series vs. #77 Virginia; #5 Vandy hosts #17 Kentucky, and - of course - #3 Georgia hosts us. The difference between #3 SOS (.5815) and out 6th ranked SOS (.5809) is whisker thin, and we are the only ones on the road this weekend, so that should bolster our SOS compared to all the rest, who are playing at home. #2 N. Carolina sits at .5885, but they play - by far - the weakest RPI opponent of all of those teams, so we may catch them.
I wouldn’t want to leave it in the committee’s hands if we lost all 3 games this weekend, although we might still get a top 8 seed even if we do. Better to win a game . . . or two . . . or three, and take chance out of it. All 3 of those
The weather supposed to be bad all across the southeast so it’s going to be a problem for everybody.
I can live with a series-shortened SEC season right now.
If were to sweep UGA on the road, I’d think we’d be in pretty good shape for a #2 seed behind UF. I can’t imagine we’d be worse than 4 under those circumstances, but I’d think even a #3 might be a bit low in light of all you just outlined. Stanford would be our competition for #2, but they just lost 2 to Ore St. We’d have to get close to them or overtake them if we were to sweep UGA.
Unfortunately, I don’t see us sweeping UGA. If we’re not rained out of 3 games, I’d just like to win more than we lose. A 1-1 split wouldn’t hurt us at all. Might help us.
Thread has kinda drifted away from the forecast, but I don’t anticipate a #2 national seed under any circumstances. Pac-12 doesn’t have a tournament, and Stanford has a 1.5-game lead over Oregon State with 6 to play, plus one more midweek game. This weekend Stanford is at home vs. Wazzu, which is really bad (10th in the P12, which is 11 teams), then at UWash to end the season. UW is fourth in the league, so not terrible, but I’d expect the Thunderchickens* to win five of those six. If they don’t, Oregon State finishes up at USC and vs. UCLA. UCLA is 37 RPI, UW is 66, SoCal is 113th and Wazzu is 165th. Only UCLA is projected as an NCAAT team right now.
Anyway, to sum up my point, I think the 2 seed will be the Pac-12 winner and we’d be looking at 3 or 4. Unless Wazzu comes up with something crazy in Palo Alto, or 9th-place SC against the Beavs.
- – The Stanford defense that somehow stopped Bill Burnett on the goal line in 1970 in WMS became known as the Thunderchickens, a name apparently taken from a Western motorcycle gang at that time. Two years later, Stanford, which was previously known as the Indians, became the first school to drop a Native American-related mascot over concerns about the negative connotations for Native Americans. The student body voted to adopt the name Robber Barons, a reference to school founder Leland Stanford, but the SU administration nixed that idea. Among the also-receiving-votes in that student referendum was Thunderchickens. The Stanford student paper had an amusing look at that possibility here:
<LINK_TEXT text=“https://stanforddailyarchive.com/cgi-bi … 05-01.2.30”>https://stanforddailyarchive.com/cgi-bin/stanford?a=d&d=stanford19720505-01.2.30</LINK_TEXT>
Just to be clear, my comments above were about the SOS rankings. Of course, at the upper levels, SOS rankings are correlated to the overall RPI rankings, to some degree. But I don’t anticipate finishing higher than a 3rd overall seed even if we sweep Georgia. I think we’ll finish somewhere between 4 and 7, depending on this weekend’s results.
In reality, so long as we’re in the top 8, I’m fine. At this time of year, any team we might host for a Super would be (1) very good and (2) “hot”, having just won their own regional. So long as we’re playing at home, I really couldn’t ask for anything more.
Well, to get back to the weather forecast, it just occurred to me that I have more than a fan’s interest in the weather in that part of the country this weekend. I’ll be in Savannah & Charleston from Wednesday morning until Sunday night. Sounds like I’m in for a soggy time.
Back to seedings. You’re right, Wiz, even without the highly unlikely chance we could get to a #2 seed, the big key is to get to play the super at Baum. (I’m not taking the regional for granted here, but we all know we’ll be disappointed with anything short of a CWS appearance this year.) We’ve proved we can play with anyone in the country, especially at Baum. No one coming in will be better than Florida, who we went 1-2 with on the road. None will be appreciably better than UK, SC, or AU. And all we have to do in a super is win two, not three.
In looking at RPI SOS again, I failed to factor in that #2 (SOS) N. Carolina also has a mid-week home date vs. UNC Wilmington (#91 RPI) in addition to their weekend series with Va. Tech (# 136). And #3 Vandy mas a midweek with Middle Tennessee (#147) that will hurt them. So I believe there is a very good chance we pass both of them and have the #2 SOS in RPI by the time we finish the Georgia series. We already “passed” Wake Forest overnight due to the results of other games yesterday to move into #5 SOS. Of course, that’s unless some of these games get rained out.
What’s interesting is that our RPI and SOS are both virtual ties with Georgia (according to the current Warren Nolan numbers, UGA has an RPI of .6094 to our .6090, while their SOS is .5810 to our .5809). . . so the result of our head-to-head series this weekend will determine who ranks higher in RPI, while it’s likely the results of who each of us has played (which includes a lot of the same teams, but some different ones as well) will most likely determine who will have the better RPI SOS. Florida, who plays at #35 MSU, will end up with the #1 SOS at the end of the regular season.
AccuWeather now shows 62% for Thursday and 55% Thursday night. Around 60%/55% Friday and Sat.
It will all depend on when it rains and the windows between rain storms.
The same system that has been dumping periodic rain showers in Northeast Fla. (Jacksonville), since Sunday, is the same system that is affecting GA as well. This system is expected to be a factor all the way thru Sunday.
Well the forecast looks a little more positive. Maybe they get the games in.
When the Wichita Wranglers, the Kansas City Royals’ AA affiliate, were preparing to move to Northwest Arkansas some 10 years ago, local residents here were polled about what mascot name should the team should adopt. I believe “Thunderchickens” came in second to “Naturals,” thus blowing a chance to give the NWA team a truly unique name. From time to time, even today, the Naturals will have a “What If …” night in which they wear Thunderchickens uniforms and the current mascot, Strike the Sasquatch, wears a beak.
My sons liked Thunderchickens so much, both played on college intramural teams by that name (one son at Wichita State [sort of ironic], the other at UA).