Boyd's World-> Breadcrumbs Back to Omaha-> Collapses (and Late Charges)

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Collapses (and Late Charges)

As I write this today, my alma mater, the school of whom I have been a fan since my good old prenatal days, is sitting at #2 in the ISR's. Now, you probably can't tell it from my writing, where everything is deadpan anyway, but I'm not the most excitable guy around. Nonetheless, I'm starting to believe in this team and swallow some of the KoolAid, and that's a dangerous thing, since I know there might be some heartache in that direction. Nonetheless, so far, this looks like a great team to me, one that can easily stand with 1985 and 1989 as the best in school history.

Now, you're not here to listen to me rant about my team, but in my quest to decide just how much of that KoolAid to swallow, there's a good general question: Just how good is it to be in the top 5 on March 31? I mean, after this weekend we're halfway through the season, so it's got to mean something, right? The top 5 is about the range that contains the contenders for the title, so that's a reasonable place to look.

At first glance, the news is good. Of the 40 teams who were in the top 5 after March 31 between 1998 and 2005, 25 of them finished the season, postseason included, in the top 5 (all of these rankings are ISR's, of course). Now, using 3/31 is a bit of a cheat, since the end of the season has moved back a bit since 1998, but it's not a big enough difference to bother adjusting for it. Having established that the general case looks pretty good, let's cater to my doomsday-prone personality and look at the downside. What are the biggest falls by teams in the top 5?

Year Team                      3/31  End

1998 Arizona                     4    19
2004 UC Irvine                   4    18
2000 Louisiana-Lafayette         1    12
2000 Texas                       3    14
1999 Pepperdine                  1    10
2004 Rice                        3     9
2000 Houston                     4     9
2003 Baylor                      3     7
2002 Wake Forest                 5     9
2001 Long Beach State            5     9

I'm looking at the ordinal rankings rather than the raw ratings because there's an interesting effect where a couple of teams have fallen a long way in the raw ISR's and still stayed at #1 because they were so far ahead at this point -- one team (Texas, 2002) actually managed to fall around 8 ISR points and move from #2 to #1 because the team in front of them fell even further.

Given that, it looks like even the downside is a top 20 finish. That's not enough for the way I'm feeling, but it's a good floor to things.

While we're at it, what's the furthest down anyone has come to hit the top 5?

Year Team                      3/31  End

2004 Cal State Fullerton        24    3
2002 Florida State              21    3
2004 South Carolina             16    5
2001 Nebraska                   14    5
2001 Miami, Florida             13    4
2000 Louisiana State            11    3
2002 Texas                       7    1
1998 Florida State               9    4
2000 Southern California         8    4
2000 South Carolina              5    1

You'll notice that a couple of these won the whole thing, so don't give up hope if your team's still hanging around the lower half of the top 25.

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   North Carolina        Liberty              UCLA
Atlantic 10    Wake Forest           Purdue               Washington
Atlantic Sun   Miami, Florida        UC Irvine            Stanford
Horizon        Florida State         Long Beach State     Georgia
Ivy            North Carolina State  Cal State Fullerton  Arkansas
MAAC           Virginia              Pacific              Mississippi State
MEAC           Oklahoma              Old Dominion         Alabama
Mountain West  Texas                 Rice                 Louisiana State
NEC            Kansas                Houston              Florida
OVC            Oklahoma State        Tulane               South Carolina
Patriot        Baylor                Kent State           Elon
Southland      Nebraska              Oral Roberts         College of Charleston
Sun Belt       Kansas State          Wichita State        Hawaii
SWAC           Notre Dame            Arizona State        Fresno State
Georgia Tech   Rutgers               Oregon State         San Diego
Clemson        Winthrop              Southern California  Pepperdine

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. As always, I welcome actual pitch count corrections.

Boyd's World-> Breadcrumbs Back to Omaha-> Collapses (and Late Charges)

About the author, Boyd Nation