D1Baseball has its midseason tournament projections out. I don’t pay much attention to the teams they have in the individual regionals because I think that is impossible to know at this point. What I do find interesting is which teams they have hosting and as national seeds.
Right now, Arkansas is the No. 5 national seed in their view, which goes to show the respect they have for the schedule the Razorbacks have played. You don’t necessarily expect a 19-9 midway record to be a national seed.
Kent State and San Diego State are in this projection, in addition to all of the SEC teams the Razorbacks have played.
And if form held in this hypothetical bracket, we would be hosting Auburn in the Super Regional (remember - they are seeding all 16 regionals now; so the #5 seed would project to host the #12 seed). Which means that this weekend is a (projected) preview of a Super! And, for that matter, the last two weekends have been previews of Omaha match-ups.
I’m encouraged that reasonably objective, learned observers still have us that high. I don’t guess I realized our schedule was so full of good teams (or void of really bad teams.). Grambling St is usually pretty bad, so I doubt we’ll get any boost from playing them. I’m aware our SOS will get better still with additional SEC play & having nc games with Tex Tech & Mo St (SMS or whatever).
I’d still feel better if we’d won at least one of those Sunday losses at UF or OM. Auburn will be a tough series, especially when we face Mize. Regardless, I think the key to that game will be to eliminate errors. Well, perhaps the key to the whole series will be to eliminate errors. At least keep the number down to no more than 2 all weekend. If we can do that, I like our chances. But I’m afraid to predict that right now.
The key is that Arkansas is only playing Grambling once. In the past, Arkansas would sometimes play a couple of two-game midweek series against the SWAC. Four games against that type of team will hurt your RPI, whereas one is OK.
Furthermore, EVERYONE is going to (or has) play at least a few games against that level of competition. The big difference is that few (especially, those were are being measured against) play the type of non-conference games we have/will play this year. When you have non-conference series against USC, Texas, Kent State, and Texas Tech, plus single games against Arizona and Missouri State, you have swapped a lot of “plus” games in place of games against lower level teams that would penalize RPI.
Then, throw in an SEC schedule that includes several topp 25 teams (and about half of those top TEN teams), and you’ve got the recipe for a Super-Regional hosting RPI - IF, we can take care of business.