By Hunt Palmer
LSU will bus to Hoover on Wednesday in good position.
The Tigers being left out of the top eight seeds come Monday would be a sizeable upset. LSU boasts some very strong metrics. Notably, LSU finished in third place in the nation’s strongest league, won seven of 10 SEC series, won 57 percent of its quadrant one games and only Arkansas has won more baseball games as of May 19.
Still, there’s more to the equation.
The top five teams in the RPI are SEC teams, and all of them have better strength of schedule metrics than LSU. Auburn, Vanderbilt, Texas and Arkansas all won more quadrant one games than the Tigers. Texas and Auburn beat LSU head-to-head. Vanderbilt played the toughest SEC schedule, and Arkansas won 20 league games.
North Carolina is going to be a top eight after a series win in Tallahassee.
That’s six teams that are sitting pretty alongside LSU.
DUCKS AND BEAVERS
The good news for the Tigers is that to find two more teams to occupy those final two spots ahead of LSU, you probably have to take both Oregon programs–the Ducks and Beavers.
That’s going to be tough, but here’s the case.
Oregon won the Big 10 and has moved its RPI up to No. 12 as of Monday morning. The Ducks also carry a stellar 9-1 record against quadrant one. They swept Oregon State in four games and played the 10th toughest non-conference strength of schedule. That’s strong on paper.
I don’t believe Oregon State’s case to be nearly as strong. The Beavers were left without a conference this year, so they deserve some respect for putting together a solid schedule considering that challenge along with their geographical issues. Corvallis isn’t the easiest place to get to. Because of that, they played 35 games away from home this season. While expensive and time consuming, that’s also a huge boost to the RPI which is No. 6 as of Monday.
Traditionally, the committee has leaned on the RPI rather heavily. That’s Oregon State’s only hope, in my opinion.
The Beavers were beaten all four times by Oregon and lost early season games against Auburn and Oklahoma. Their strongest series wins are UC-Irvine and Cal Poly. There’s one easy metric to track with Oregon State this week. The first weekend in May, Oregon State won three-of-four at Hawaii. The Rainbow Warriors are exactly 60th in the Monday RPI. That’s the cutoff for quadrant one on the road. Should Hawaii drop just one spot, Oregon State will lose three quadrant one victories and fall to just 7-8 in that metric. I don’t think Oregon State’s case is strong enough as it is today. That will only weaken it, and the Beavers don’t have a conference tournament to play in this week.
WHERE ARE THE TIGERS?
Right now, D1Baseball projects LSU as the No. 7 national seed. That projection is largely due to the fact that Georgia swept Auburn who swept LSU. I think LSU probably sits somewhere in the 5-to-7 range.
With a watchful eye on Oregon, Hawaii and perhaps Florida State, LSU should feel comfortable. It would take a Tiger loss on Friday and some really deep-level scenarios for LSU to slip out of a top eight.
LSU probably doesn’t even need to win a game on Friday, but it would help. As long as Hawaii drops a game and Florida State doesn’t sweep its way to an ACC title, LSU doesn’t have much to worry about.
This team went 30-5 at The Box during the regular season. Someone is probably going to have to beat them twice in one weekend in Baton Rouge to keep the Tigers out of Omaha.
