NCAA baseball selection committee chair Mike Buddie explains Notre Dame hosting snub

When the NCAA revealed the 16 regional hosts for the upcoming NCAA Baseball Tournament, Notre Dame was a notable omission. The Irish were a projected by most to host a regional, some thinking that they could reach a national seed as a top eight overall team.

That was not the case, though, leading to criticism by many. On Monday, the full bracket was revealed showing that Notre Dame will be the No. 2 seed in the Statesboro Regional. That regional included Georgia Southern (the No. 16 overall seed), Texas Tech, and UNC Greensboro.

Following the selection show, Mike Buddie, Army’s Director of Athletics and the D1 Baseball Committee Chair, was asked to explain why Notre Dame was not selected as a host.

“Well again, you feel like you go back and forth with these numbers,” Buddie said. “There was some incongruency this year. I think this is my sixth year on the committee, and often times RPI and conference finish are a little bit more aligned. So that was a good thing, because we don’t ever want to rely solely on one metric and it forced us to really dig in.”

Buddie on evaluating Notre Dame as potential host: ‘We had to get really particular’

It was a tight race to earn the final few spots as a host in this year’s field. The Irish were one of a few teams that are viewed as snubs, but that was just the nature of this field and it shows how good teams were across the country.

“So when we were looking at Notre Dame and Oklahoma and LSU for some of those last host spots, we had to get really particular,” said Buddie. “Instead of looking just at quad one, we looked at record against teams ranked 1-25 to try and separate. Our belief was to be a national seed, unless you’ve done something spectacular in your conference regular season and/or winning the tournament like East Carolina and Stanford and Tennessee were all able to do, how do you perform against those exceptional teams, those elite teams. Being able to host makes a huge difference. Certainly the regular season needed to matter. Notre Dame was the four seed in the ACC.

“Again, super challenging. We know that Notre Dame is a phenomenal team and had a great year. Unfortunately for them, geography is sometimes their enemy. They lost three games this year, three conference games, two against Virginia Tech and one against NC State. Those three games, or even two of them, could have swung a significant direction for either one of those teams. So unfortunate for sure, but that’s what makes baseball frustrating and so beautiful at the same time.”