Boyd's World-> Breadcrumbs Back to Omaha-> How Easy Was It?

About the author, Boyd Nation

Got a professional interest in college stats? I've got an offer for you.

How Easy Was It?

About this time last year, I started trying to predict the tournament field. It's not that I think the tournament is the whole point of the season or that it's even all that important; it's that a lot of you do, and I wanted to see at what point things became obvious, or at least as obvious as they ever do. With that in mind, here's how I did:

Week   Teams

3/16     52
3/23     52
3/30     51
4/06     53
4/13     54
4/20     57
4/27     57
5/04     56
5/11     57
5/18     59
5/25     60

At first glance, that would look like there's not a lot of mystery to the whole process. I'm not exactly the biggest expert on the inner workings of the process, and I got 80% of the field right a fourth of the way through the season. On the other hand, you've got a dozen or so obvious one-bid conferences (and I didn't pick winners there; that's a sucker's bet), and there's a good bit of interest at the local level there. There's another dozen or so of the usual suspects -- you can pretty much fill in those slots in December. That doesn't always work -- Southern California has missed two in a row, for example -- but throwing in Miami, LSU, Stanford, South Carolina, Rice, Cal State Fullerton, Florida State, Clemson, Arizona State, and Texas doesn't exactly require a lot of thought. So, basically, there are a couple of dozen spots up for grabs at this point. A third or so of those will clear up over the next month, while a handful will wait until the conference tournaments to clear up. All told, it's not a bad system from that point of view, although it would be nice if the actual process involved getting more of the right teams in. Next week, we'll take a look at that question. Meanwhile, we'll get started on this year's list a week earlier. It's tempting to just run last year's list, but even I'm not that cynical.

This means absolutely nothing, ignore it.

This is one generic layman's predictions for who gets in the tournament. I'm not going to bother picking a team from the one-bid conferences, since the conference tournament will just be a crapshoot, but if I only list one team from a conference, they'll get an at large bid if they don't get the automatic bid.

America East   Wichita State         Ohio State           Arizona              
A10            College of            Notre Dame           Southern California  
CAA            Charleston            Rutgers              California           
Horizon        Miami, Florida        Winthrop             Louisiana State      
MAAC           Florida State         Coastal Carolina     Mississippi          
MAC            North Carolina        UC Irvine            South Carolina       
MEAC           Georgia Tech          Long Beach State     Florida              
Ivy            Clemson               Cal State Fullerton  Arkansas             
Mountain West  North Carolina State  UC Riverside         Alabama              
NEC            Central Florida       Texas Christian      Auburn               
OVC            Florida Atlantic      East Carolina        Vanderbilt           
Patriot        Texas                 Tulane               Georgia              
SWAC           Texas A&M             Oregon State         Mississippi State    
Sun Belt       Nebraska              Stanford             Northwestern State   
WCC            Texas Tech            Arizona State        Texas State          
Oral Roberts   Baylor                Washington           Rice                 

Rather than keep returning to the subject of pitch counts and pitcher usage in general too often for my main theme, I'm just going to run a standard feature down here where I point out potential problems; feel free to stop reading above this if the subject doesn't interest you. This will just be a quick listing of questionable starts that have caught my eye -- the general threshold for listing is 120 actual pitches or 130 estimated, although short rest will also get a pitcher listed if I catch it. Don't blame me; I'm just the messenger.

(*) Pitch count is estimated.

If you're interested in reprinting this or any other Boyd's World material for your publication or Web site, please read the reprint policy and contact me

Boyd's World-> Breadcrumbs Back to Omaha-> How Easy Was It?

About the author, Boyd Nation