#1 Team falls to 8-9 in their conference?

In this instance, I think it's a combination of three factors: (1) the difficulty in assigning accurate rankings early in a season, (2) Mississippi State's fast start, and (3) more parity in the SEC than we're accustomed to seeing.

In response to the parity, there's a pretty lively debate taking place among long-time SEC observers about whether or not the conference is down this year. You can get a glimpse of this over at sebaseball.com.

Regardless of where you come out in the debate, it's undeniable that the SEC's conference RPI is still leading the nation; and they'll probably send the most number of teams to the NCAA tournament. Most of the debate seems to be around the question of whether there are any standout teams; ones strong enough to get to Omaha.

If the ACC is #2 then Miami isn't helping much. Saturday I watched in person #24 Miami get shellacked by UVA. UVA was up 9-0 after 5 innngs before winning 15-7. I was much less than impressed with Miami who took the series from UVA with wins Friday and Sunday.

#58 RPI San Diego is ranked #25 and they are 23-14, 6-3 in West Coast Conference, which has an RPI ranked ranked 7th overall. I guess if your coach is a Hall of Famer it helps your ranking.

Why isn't Troy State in BA top 25? #13 RPI, 32-10, 11-1 in the conference (Sunbelt). A glaring ommision, imo.

Dad04 ...

Just a minor clarification here ... the San Diego that is ranked is NOT Gwynn's San Diego State. The ranked program is the University of San Diego (Torreros), a small private college that plays in the WCC against teams like Pepperdine, Loyola Marymount, St Mary's, Santa Clara etc. Gwynn's San Diego State University (Aztecs) competes in the Mountain West conference against schools such as BYU, UNLV, the Air Force Academy etc.

Nice catch FBM.