No. Not hard at all. The committee is charged with putting the best at-large teams in the field of 64. UK was one of those by a ridiculously large margin. It failed to do its job, succumbing to politics.
Super Regionals...
- Thread starter Jeff Drummond
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No. Not hard at all. The committee is charged with putting the best at-large teams in the field of 64. UK was one of those by a ridiculously large margin. It failed to do its job, succumbing to politics.
The people in the committee room were not going to put another SEC team in the tourney, no matter how good they were on paper.
And I can't say that I blame them. I don't care what conference you play in, if you can't finish in the top 10 in it, you don't have much of an argument.
I understand that its easier to hang on to the "we was robbed" narrative than it is to be objective. But the fact is, this team underachieved. And fortunately for Mingione, the soft Lexington media is giving him a pass.
It is a valid argument, and then again it isn't.
If your conference has a team that was near the bottom of the league all year long until the final two weeks (Vandy) and was just an eyelash from making the CWS, that really dispels the notion of needing to be a certain spot in the standings. It's really irrelevant.
The committee has one job and one job only: fill the tournament out with the best teams 1-64 after the automatic bids are in place. They did not do that.
That said, if you're walk the highwire like UK did this season, you'd better take care of business and not put yourself in that position. You've never once seen me say "we was robbed," only that the committee failed in its job.
Jeff , you both are a little right in that UK was at #30 rpi and the committee took the first 29, skipped UK and took the next 13. That's bs. We were also 5-7 with two series wins over cws teams. On the other side we were 2-4 against the two worst teams in the sec. That was the killer along with losing Thompson(for me our best pitcher) for almost the the entire sec season. All that said and with our entire body of work, we should have gotten in.
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IF Stoops covered Florida's receivers, we would have beaten Florida! IF IF IF!!! (Don't get me wrong, I am not a Stoops hater, but I am still bitter about that game)
Basic Scoring rules, once the ball hits the runner, he is out and the batter is awarded 1st base and gets credit for a single to boot.
Jeff: You are 100% right, the committee had a bias vs the SEC and UK was the odd man out. WE had a better resume than Northeastern, Oklahoma State and Washington. The entire system needs to be overhaul and find a way to reward teams based on a mathematical formula that insures the best
at-large teams in the tournament.
at-large teams in the tournament.
That should be what the RPI helps do. Unfortunately, the committee chose to ignore the RPI and went by an arbitrary standard to make sure UK was left out. I'm curious if there is any bad blood between Mingione and Tanner from their time coaching against each other, or if their reasoning on leaving out UK was truly on the up-and-up.
I understand it is the rule. Just don't think it is right to award a free base like that.
