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If you have a kid playing or are just a fan or Alum of a D3 school you are already aware of the 2 week frenzy that are the conference tournaments. Last night about midnight the NCAA posted the teams and brackets for this years road to Appleton.

https://www.ncaa.com/news/base...selections-announced

There will be all the typical madness that goes along with the 8 regionals being played simultaneously. There will be some great baseball played by kids and players most have never heard of.

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On another board, folks who seem to know what they are talking about say that Trinity was excluded because their SOS was weak, they went 0-2 in their conference tourney, they  lost to teams with losing records. and they sputtered to the finish line. Apparently performance in the last 25% of the year is a new criteria for selection.

Probably D3baseball board. SOS is very important criteria, in the selection process. However out west due to distances and other factors, it can be difficult, to put a together a strong schedule. However it is a well known criteria, and has been for a while. Cal Lu suffered the same fate a couple of years back.

Best way to get to the regional, is win your conference tournament. Don't leave it up to the committee. This is especially true out west.

Yeah SOS is a big ... which is why Cal Lu, after it got screwed that year by SOS started scheduling either a second Spring trip or extra home games with non-conference teams who were looking for warm places to play.  It also played a role in the SCIAC eliminating what had been their end of the season, pre-tournament round-robin.   Gives them all more chances to play strong non-conference opponents.  This year perhaps as a result 2 SCIAC teams are in.    

Unfortunately,  Cal Lu kind of sucked.   

From what I can gather, the cause of Cal Lu's probably temporary decline seems to have been that two strong seeming incoming classes ended up sort  of hallowing themselves  out, because of guys who gave up without being pushed out the door,  according to my son  (who was one of them)  and some of his former teammates.  The team was extremely loaded with upper class studs when those guys were frosh and sophomores.  One of them even looked like he was slated to be the number 1 or number 2 arm perhaps after his freshman year.   Many of them  seem to have been either not  committed enough overall or not patient enough to wait their turns for playing time  -- though that's not how they themselves would put it,  I'm guessing.  (Certainly that's not how my son puts it, but its clear to me that he just wasn't willing to wait his turn.)    So this year the team was younger than it has been in recent years and also reliant on some upperclass transfers that didn't really shine.  Maybe there's an upside though.  Perhaps they are about to start another cycle with some  guys who will have been 3-4 year starters by their senior years.    That's what happened with the most recent cohort of studs.  They got chances starting freshman year and got better and better, until they were a dominating group.   (Although strangely,  it wasn't really the core of that group that won the  D3 WS.  That WS team kinda of played over its head with just a few guys left over from the group of studs I'm talking about. )

Last edited by SluggerDad

I didn't dig very deep before I made my comment. I have not completely understood the complexities of the selection process, but with Trinity finishing the season in the top 20, I just assumed they should be given a shot.  Didn't realize their SOS was relatively weak.

Thanks for the clarifying info.  Obvious to me now that Amherst wouldn't have made the tournament without winning the conference title.  I get it.

One other thing. The D3baseball top 25, while very accurate in my opinion, has nothing to do with the selection process. 

There are many pro's and cons in each region. While it is tough to build a strong Strength Of Schedule out west, they start much earlier and the games are more spread out. So much so, that they need fewer pitchers during the regular season. 

 

BLD, I understand that now more than ever.  Kai's team played about ten games the last two weeks of the season. It was crazy.  And they ALL mattered.  The league has a west and east division with 5 teams in each division.  They only play 12 games that count toward reaching the playoffs, and only two teams in each division make the conference playoffs.  Each 3 game series is huge. And the weather mashed them all together, where one day there'd be a rainout makeup and the next the beginning doubleheader of a three-game series. Amherst was lucky to take two of three from each of their 4 opponents.  It was the only way they could qualify for the league playoffs.  

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