NCAA Baseball Tournament 2013: Why Oregon For No. 8?

NC State missed out on a national seed, and there are several reasons for that--some NC State could control, some it could not. In the latter department, we have this:

As we heard, FSU was not punished for its 0-4 week -- No. 7 national seed. But Oregon beats out NC State for No. 8. That's nonsense.

— Aaron Fitt (@aaronfitt) May 27, 2013

Selection committee chairman:

Farrell: "We tried to minimize the final weekend as much as possible for a number of teams because of the tournament situation."

— Ryan Tice (@RyanTice) May 27, 2013

Florida State's 0-fer in the ACC tournament didn't ding them much in the eyes of the selection committee, which is obviously a major reason why the Seminoles ended up with the No. 7 seed. I had thought our decent run and their flameout would provide us the edge we needed, but I also thought that those games would carry a typical amount of weight. They did not. Oh well.

But this isn't really about NCSU vs. FSU--both were deserving of national seeds. The question that lingers is: why Oregon?

Farrell says they spent "considerable" amount of time on last 2 national seeds; 4 teams in consideration for last 2: ORE, IND, NCSU, FSU

— John Manuel (@johnmanuelba) May 27, 2013

Here's a quick comparison of their resume to ours:

(All numbers courtesy WarrenNolan.com)

Call it a push in three of those categories, with NC State holding clear edges in the other two. The glaring figures, obviously, are those records against the RPI top 50. The Ducks had fewer opportunities to play quality opponents because the Pac-12 isn't nearly as deep as the ACC, but they did not win a single series they played against an opponent in the top 50. NC State won three.

Every other national seed has at least 12 top-50 wins, and only one other (FSU) has a losing record against the top 50. (But at 14-15, FSU's record is way more impressive.)

To me, that RPI column should have been too much for the committee to ignore, but so it goes. I guess the committee just wasn't comfortable giving so many seeds to teams in the southeast. Whether that's a conscious consideration of theirs or not, I can't say. I'm sure they'd say it isn't.

We can lament this turn of events, but it doesn't change the fact that we have ourselves a good draw. We'd probably have been paired with Oregon in the supers even if we got the eight; it simply would have changed the venue, is all. Getting that national seed would have been huge for the program, but at least we have been given the chance to prove without doubt which school deserved it.