We are on track to get 7 more SEC wins and....
- Thread starter SLUdog
- Start date
15 should be a lock. 14 is certainly not….and will require us to both win out everywhere else and also make a little bit of noise in Hoover.
We're going to get a big RPI boost just from playing Tennessee, like everyone else has. Warren Nolan has us with a predicted RPI of 46 and that's with a 13-17 SEC record.
You've said elsewhere we've pulled even with Ole Miss. I don't see that. Outside of a slight RPI advantage (likely explained by simply playing 3 games vs UT), we've got them most everywhere else.
You've said elsewhere we've pulled even with Ole Miss. I don't see that. Outside of a slight RPI advantage (likely explained by simply playing 3 games vs UT), we've got them most everywhere else.
Good to hear we're projected that high at 13-17. Cohen needs to buy that UNA (rpi #272) game out. That game does nothing but hurt our chances
Interestingly, this weekend, we got a bump of 4 spots while OM fell 13 spots. RPI doesn't like us. We passed Kentucky for 13th in the sec in rpi temporarily, but back in last right now
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Ole Miss is by far the worst RPI team we play in conference play, hence why there hasn’t been much of a boost from this weekend. Mizzou is 37, Florida is 13, A&M is 26, Tennessee is 1. Still feel like if we win 6 or 7 more conference games our RPI will be where it needs to be to get in.
I feel like at worst we can put ourselves in a spot where we go to Hoover needing one or two wins to get in. And as of right now we would be very safely in Hoover as the 8 or 9 seed.
I feel like at worst we can put ourselves in a spot where we go to Hoover needing one or two wins to get in. And as of right now we would be very safely in Hoover as the 8 or 9 seed.
I agree with you, but it took all we had to beat OM. Those teams are higher than us and OM for a reason... this stretch is about to be tough
Mizzou’s record isnt all that different from OMs which concerns me. As for the Predicted RPI it also has us at 55 with 14 SEC wins. Its just running Monte Carlo simulations. Our problem is that our OOC schedule is still awful so those teams keep losing.
Well a significantly worse Mizzou team kicked our butts last year so that series is certainly not a given and I’m sure our team remembers that series well. Florida just lost their ace but it’s still Florida and they have elite talent. Both teams have played really tough SEC schedules to this point so their records may be somewhat deceiving,
Playing UT 3 times is going to likely do the same thing for us as it did for OM. Help the RPI but greatly hurt the record, too. Let’s not pretend that us getting swept by UT isn’t by far the most likely outcome of that series. We don’t want to enter that series with any fewer than 14 wins, so we have some path to the regionals no matter what happens against UT. So we need 6-3 over the next 9 at a minimum. Certainly doable, but not easy.
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Yep, we still have a tough challenge to make the NCAA tourney assuming we need to get to at least 14 SEC wins to do so. If we are unable to win a game against TN (which is fairly probable) then that means we would have to go 6-3 in the other 3 series. That's a tough chore given we seem to be incapable of sweeping anyone.
I'll simply say, I don't think it's fairly probable we get swept by Tennessee. Runs like they're on rarely last a full season and we are clearly improving.
Agreed. The rpi where it currently sits isn’t good at all. 75. 15 wins might be a must
Well nobody will ever be proven right about what the chances of getting swept by them until after the series. But nobody would be even remotely surprised if it happens, and I think we’d both agree that we don’t want to be in a situation where we desperately need a win against a team that is currently 16-1 in league play in order to feel good about our postseason chances.
Didn't say we wouldn't get swept by them. Simply said I don't think it's "fairly probable", which was stated in the post I responded to. They're going to cool off.
I absolutely agree we don't want to go into that series desperately needing a win, but it might happen, and the defending national champs playing in the best environment in college baseball should have confidence they can get it done.
I absolutely agree we don't want to go into that series desperately needing a win, but it might happen, and the defending national champs playing in the best environment in college baseball should have confidence they can get it done.
The good news about Tennessee is that there are only two possibilities since we play them the final weekend. They’ll either enter our series significantly cooled off. Or they will enter our series having already locked up the #1 National Seed and have absolutely nothing to play for. There is no option C.
We are #95 in the RPI.
We entered yesterday with the same SEC record as the #14 RPI team, and will leave the weekend with the same SEC record as them if we can somehow scratch out a win today.
We currently have the same SEC record as the #58 RPI team (who we split the season series with, including taking 2 of 3 at their place).
We have a half-game better SEC record than the #61 RPI team.
Simply put, our RPI isn’t bad because we’re a bad team. It’s bad because we played one of the worst nonconference schedules in SEC history. We are by no means a good team, but there are a million levels between “good” and “bad”. If you knew anything about the RPI and how the formula works, you’d recognize that instead of constantly beating this “bad team” drum. You probably also have amnesia of the 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2015 teams. Those were truly bad teams.
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I keep seeing people talk about our non con schedul. If we scheduled better teams, like Tulane we are probably have an overall losing record. The reason their RPI is higher is because THEY WIN THEIR NON CONFERENCE GAMES. We are a bad baseball team. We are 12th in team ERA and 9th in BA. It’s okay though because we have some great Velo off the bat!!!
We’ve mostly won our nonconference games, too. We only have one truly bad loss in the nonconference….to Northern Kentucky. Our problem is we are going to end up with over half of our nonconference schedule falling in Q4, which is atrocious. We’ve already played 13 such games and have yet another one coming up against UNA. Playing that many games against bad teams is 17ing terrible for your RPI….even if you win all of them. But in a sport like baseball where nobody ever goes undefeated even against bad teams, it makes it even worse when you inevitably lose one here and there.
Arkansas is probably about to learn a hard lesson on it, too. #3 team in the country in the polls, but they’ve just about locked themselves out of a national seed and may not even host because they have a terrible RPI (#27) for a team with their record. The reason is the same….nonconference schedule. Gonna have to finish somewhat hot just to host, and scalding-inferno-hot to be a national seed.
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You can’t go only on SEC record because different team’s SEC schedules are vastly different. You don’t play three teams entirely and whether you play a team at home or on the road makes a big difference. We got swept by LSU at home and might get swept by Florida at home. Those home losses are RPI killers. And if we had scheduled tougher non conference games, we’d probably have an overall losing record by the end of the season.
SEC record is a much better metric of comparing SEC teams than RPI. Period. Yes, there is not full correlation of the schedules, but at the end of the year you can say who the best and worst teams are based on that much moreso than RPI. Do you think Florida is a better team than Arkansas?
Yep, bottom line is we are a very average college baseball team and a below average SEC baseball team who will finish with a losing SEC record. We have NO real difference makers either in our lineup or our pitching staff. Once Landon Sims went down we were left with just a bunch of average college pitchers and some not even that. We have a LOT of work to do to get our pitching back to where it needs to be for next season. In the batting order, we really haven't had any of the veterans step up like we were hoping. Heck, our best 2 hitters are probably a guy that transferred in from a G5 school (Yeager) and a guy that is just now even playing baseball full time (Cumbest). We struggle to even keep anyone in the order above a .300 average. If we don't hit HRs in a game our offense totally sucks. This year is a lost cause and has been for a while but the bigger concern is can we get this fixed for next year? It certainly won't be easy. NEXT year was originally supposed to be the rebuild year, not this year, but we certainly don't need another year like this. Transfer portal will likely make or break our team for next year. We do know that if Lemonis has another like this all the good will gained with the NC will be running on fumes.
Me too and although I'm very disappointed I'm actually more in shock. I just assumed with our program and this staff this just couldn't happen. Fool me once.....
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I agree. Falling back to the middle of the pack in the SEC would have been disappointing. Falling to the bottom of the SEC and very possibly not even making Hoover is pretty shocking. Heck, we started the year ranked in the Top 10.
The thing is it’s not even the first time it’s happened in the last decade. Even Polk had multiple years where he was in Omaha one year and didn’t make the NCAAT the next. It can absolutely happen and has before.
The silver lining is we’ve never stayed down for very long when it has happened before, doubt we will now.
At some point you have to just use common sense and if Arkansas wins the SEC West they're a lock to host regardless of the flawed RPI. That and the nonsensical NET rankings for basketball should be part of the equation but shouldn't mean everything. A&M actually dropped in RPI despite winning the series over South Carolina - the whole formula just doesn't make sense a lot of the time.
Hogs just need to win 2/3 in the two remaining series and they'll be 20-10 in conference, there has never been an SEC team not host a Super with 20 conference wins.
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