justbaseball posted:Hmmmmm. Seems to me that the Big South Conference was certainly the best conference just a year ago.
I mean, nobody ever said justbb doesn't know college baseball. Obviously there is humor there, but his larger point is that it was the team and not the conference that won it a year ago.
When it comes to conferences, there are four of them imho - the SEC, the Pac 12, the ACC, and the Big 12 in no particular order. People may not like to hear that but that is the general case of big time college baseball in this country. Arguing the SEC is better than the PAC 12 is like arguing chocolate is superior to vanilla - it is a matter of taste.
When it comes to discussing individual teams however, it becomes a more complicated issue and there are certainly outliers inside and outside these four conferences. Sure Coastal was an outlier last year but maybe what the average fan does not know is they were consistently knocking at the door years before having their break-thru last year. Most people do not know that prior to South Carolina defeating UCLA in 2010 for the national title, Coastal played them tougher than any team in the country that year losing two heart-breaking late inning games in the super regionals in which Coastal was a top 8 national seed. Sometimes good things come out of losing. There are no absolutes in this game. It's a BIG deal to play in one of the power conferences but obviously there are no guarantees.