Umpire's calls should be right all of the time. That one wasn't and would likely have been overturned with replay in a super regional.
Plus unless the NCAA rescinds the 2-game suspension that Berry got for not leaving the field immediately, he will miss the first two games of USM's opening weekend series at home against Mississippi State next February.
RPI is terrible, and it's not a process. It's a simple formula. We all know the formula, well, except for our coaches. However, selection is a process done behind closed doors. What is not fair is how the selection committee chooses to apply it to each individual case. They don't just take the top RPIs to fill in all the at-large bids. They look at many other factors, primarily based on RPI: Top 25 RPI wins, Top 50 RPI wins, Top 100 RPI wins, 200+ losses, SOS, OOC SOS, etc. All selectively applied and rationalized to achieve the ends they want, behind closed doors. They gave a bid to UCLA whose RPI was several spots worse than our's.
What helped those Big Ten teams inflate their RPIs wasn't being part of the Cartel. They just racked up wins over bad teams. Same as St. John's. Teams with lesser brands have done the same and got left out.
I neither said nor implied the committee should've left Clemson out. I said they got to host after losing 11 of their last 12 conference games. If how a team finishes is part of the selection criteria, shouldn't Clemson have been traveling as a 2 seed? I was simply pointing out the double standard. Clemson and Maryland finished much worse than Tech did, yet they were rewarded but not Tech.
Yes, those Big Ten teams had better RPIs, but their resumes were devoid of good wins. If those were blind resumes, I doubt those Big Ten teams would've been given all those bids.
In basketball they tell us our RPI doesn't matter and that we need more top RPI wins instead. In baseball they tell us our top RPI wins don't matter and that we need a better RPI instead. The NCAA selectively applies RPI to justify including the brands they want.
Last edited by Dawg06; 06-07-2017 at 12:22 AM.
Even if we beat A-State and SFA, our RPI would've been better, but we'd still have finished 5th in C-USA and still lost 4 of 5 to end the season. <-- Those were the 2 primary reasons given for Tech getting left out.
Burroughs is a really good speaker, and Berry kinda creeps me out a little. I could see why they'd want to trade.
Both of C-USA's reps advanced to the Regional Finals.
Big Ten at-large teams went 2-8 with their only 2 wins vs. #159 UMBC (23-25) and #185 Ohio (30-28) and embarrassing losses to non-scholarship Yale and #219 Holy Cross (24-29).
St. John's (only played 1 Top 50 team all season) and UCLA (RPI several spots behind Tech) both went 2-&-Q getting bounced by weaker teams in UNCG and SDSU, respectively.
Last edited by Dawg06; 06-07-2017 at 12:46 AM.
It's pretty certain - based on all accounts - we win the third game at MT and we had the bid, regardless of what we did in the tourney - winning SEVEN series in a row would of been the trick
That said 1 win in the tourney also puts us in the field - our schedule was fine, didn't need any more additional games to tax our lack luster staff
Outside of a better series to open than UAPB, I would not of changed our schedule make up too much (top 15 OOC SOS is what we need annually along with a top 4 finish and we get in more often that not on most years
''Don't be a bad dagh..."
The fact remains that if that same play happened this weekend, the call would have been overturned and that umpire would have been proven wrong.
I stand by the statement that umpire's calls should be right all the time. If an official in any sport isn't trying to get every call right, they shouldn't be officiating.
Will every call be made correctly? Of course not. But more and more calls will be made correctly by expanding the proper use of technology to correct umpiring mistakes.
Umpires who get calls wrong in key situations should not advance within the postseason. Even better would be to weed them out before the postseason starts.
Last edited by FriscoDawg; 06-09-2017 at 12:41 AM.
It isn't more important. The technology exists now to call balls and strikes electronically. But until MLB moves to do that it isn't going to happen anywhere else. And it may be decades before MLB umpires allow that power to be taken away from them.
In the meantime existing technology shouldn't be held back waiting for ball and strike calls to get included.
We should get robots to play the game too.