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From D1Baseball’s D1 Digest: “ Louisiana Tech is one of those teams that’ll be in the Top 25 discussion with another strong weekend. The Bulldogs picked up yet another quality win, beating Southland favorite McNeese, 7-4, on the road. Veteran slugger Hunter Wells had a big day at the plate with three hits, two RBIs and a walk.”
Looks like Tech is already garnering some national attention. With a sweep at Troy this weekend, it’ll be a hard to keep us out of the Top 25.
I would prefer to stay out of the Top 25 for now in order to get some more wins.
Will likely break through in somebody's poll with a sweep of Troy but we all know that will be a tall task on the road. I will be absolutely happy with a series win. The season is young and we have yet to run into a team with hot bats. However, I really like our young talent and depth. I'm interested to seeing how deep our pitching staff is as the season progresses. So far we have used 7 pitchers and will likely need as many as 10 week after week. So who are the other 3 that will be able to give us quality middle relief or long relief if the starter struggles. It appears Crigger will be the closer. Martinez threw well last night but they hit a lot of balls hard and we made some good defensive plays - that's baseball. The good news so far is we are not giving up free passes and making our opponent hitters earn their way on base. Usually that and good defense keeps ya in a lot of games. Go Dawgs!
My worry about this team is how well they handle being on the road. By my count we have 7 games in Ruston. Throw in our 8 games at ULM (2 vs. ULM, 6 conference). That means we have 15 games where our players get to sleep in their own beds the night before. ~40 games away from Ruston/Monroe. That's going to be tough, but they are young and should be able to handle the road.
Doubt we’ll sweep Troy, but it’ll be a good test of Troy’s bats and our pitching to see which one gives. My bet is on Troy’s bats to give because of inferior competition, but it’s hard to say so early in the season.
I’m very happy and surprised with the young talent as well. Hopeful that they’ll continue to surprise me all the way to the Top 25.
I agree with that. Certainly unprecedented with how many road games we have. On the bright side, it’ll help with RPI.Originally Posted by sportdawg
That brings up a question, when Tech plays home games at NLU and Jackson, will the RPI treat these as true home games or neutral sites. Big question for this season. RPI is huge in NCAA baseball tourney selection.
^^This!
Likely an asterisk. I'll take a sympathy At Large bid if we don't win the conference!
Exactly. We still need 40 to be certain, but 35 or so with all the "stuff" may actually work this year.
I don’t like the thought process that we won’t be able to win once people start to notice us by being in the Top 25. I’d rather us get used to being in the spotlight so that when it comes to games that matter (cusa tourney), we’ll be proven and confident when everyone is talking about us.
They’ll officially be counted as home games, but the committee may have a different opinion.
Surprised Pawdawg has not warned us about staying focused!
Jesting aside...the team just needs to focus on playing winning baseball and getting better as the season goes on. Such things as Top 25 rankings take care of themselves for teams that take care of their business.
You must be new here
Yes I'm interested on how they will calculate this with RPI. On paper we are denoted as a home team. We don't really have "home-field advantage" being that the game is in Jackson, MS. This is very much a neutral site contest. I bet the committee will adjust it that it's a neutral site.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rating_percentage_index
"The formula used in NCAA baseball is the same as that used in basketball except for the adjustment of home and road records. Starting in 2013, college baseball RPI formula values each road victory as 1.3 instead of 1.0. Each home win is valued at 0.7 instead of 1.0. Conversely, each home loss counts 1.3 against a team’s RPI and each road loss counts 0.7 against a team’s RPI. Neutral-site games have a value of 1.0, but the committee is studying how to determine if a game should be considered a neutral-site contest. The adjustment is based on data showing that home teams win about 62 percent of the time in Division I baseball."[5] The change was made because of the discrepancy in the number of home games teams play. Some schools are able to play 35–40 of their 56 allowable games at home, while other teams, due to factors such as weather, may play only 20 home games.
This adjustment replaces the previous system of bonuses or penalties that teams received. Bonus points were awarded for beating top-75 non-conference opponents on the road and penalty points were given for losing to bottom-75 non-conference opponents at home. Bonuses and penalties were on a sliding scale, separated into groups of 25, with the top bonus for a road win against a top-25 team and the worst penalty for a home loss to a bottom-25 opponent.[5]"
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