2006 vs. 2005

[TrueBlue82]

I was lamenting the Eagles probable #4 seed for the NCAA tourney, when I compared this year's record to 2005. I went further to breakdown the regular season record by Mid-Con, Big 5 (ORU, Arkansas, OU, OSU, Wichita State), and other. The comparisons are quite interesting.

Mid-Con 13-2 22-2

Big 5 4-0 1-4

Other 13-12 14-12

Total 30-14 37-18

Assuming a sweep of Oakland at home this weekend (not a huge stretch), our Mid-Con record would be comparable, except for five fewer wins due to weather. Our Big 5 record is exceptional, and a win at Stillwater on Tuesday would cap a perfect season. The "other" (which I thought would really hurt us) was comparable to last year. And even though last year's "other" had more games against ranked opponents, I think this year's schedule had a comparable overall quality. Our 0-3 sweeps at Cal-Irvine and vs. USF at home hurt bad, but were they any worse than last year's 0-3 sweep at Santa Barbara, and 1-2 home series loss to BYU? Probably not. Certainly, our record against the Big 5 this year should count for something.

Which leads me to the question (assuming a Mid-Con tourney victory) are we a 3 or a 4 seed? And, is this team more capable of pulling off a first round upset than last year?

[redhammer]

Great analysis. But what we do lack from last year is the marque pitcher we had in Bigley. We probably have a better overall hitting line up this year, but Bigley could be counted on to keep us in the game with anyone in the country. I'm not certain we have that this year.

We do seem to have the ability to show up in big games, as your analysis indicates, with our success against the big 5. Our win over OSU looms even larger with their sweep vs OU this weekend. I'm certain that there is no NO#1 seed in the country that would be happy with ORU as their opening game.

[MrsSmith]

I'm guessing by the "Big 5" you are including Wichita State and of course Ou, OSU and Arkansas. We talk about the big 5 in basketball which includes TU so it kind of confused me.

[ORUJason]

Since they have expanded the NCAA baseball field to 64 teams, ORU's best shot at a #3 seed in a regional is to get their RPI down under 50.

But with there only being (probably) 8 games left until the NCAA selection (assuming no rain outs), in the best case scenario, ORU could be 38-14.

That is assuming that they beat OSU, beat Oakland in all 4 games, and play the minimum 3 games in the Mid-Con tourney.

In that situation, since they played a pretty tough non-conf. schedule, and would be the regular season and conference champs, and have some strong non-conf. wins, I think a #3 seed would still be possible.

I don't know how closely they use RPI in their seeding process, but winning out would probably give them an RPI right around 50, so it will be interesting to see what happens if they win out.

Without Bigley as a first game starter, I think ORU's chances would be much better to play a #2 seed than a #1 seed, especially since most #1 seeds host the tournaments, and therefore have home crowd advantage.

With OSU playing so well, I have heard that they may now receive a regional bid. I would welcome playing them in the first round as a #3 or #4 seed. It would also make the game more interesting that we would have already played them twice this year, and beat them at least once...