jstevenson
Sailor Stevenson
Many people get very excited about March Madness, and a bunch of basketball schools suffering huge upsets, work pools, and spending a couple weeks of Thursday/Friday hitting the "BOSS" button CBS's website.
But for a rare breed of us, it's not about March, it's about June.
What is this you say? Welcome to the NCAA Men's Baseball Tournament. A four weekend event (with some midweek games), that determines college baseball's national champion. Though this tournament may seem a bit weird to you if you've never watched it before, so we'll try to explain with this thread.
The tournament
The NCAA Baseball Tournament is essentially a four-round tournament:
Regionals - 64 teams
Super Regionals - 16 teams
College World Series - 8 teams
College World Series Final - 2 teams
64 teams enter, only one leaves. It's double elimination IN EACH ROUND. So you can technically win the tournament with as many as four losses (if you lose once in each round).
Each conference has an automatic bid into the tournament. Most conferences reward this to the tournament champion. Some conferences (like the Pac-12) do not have a conference tournament and/or choose to reward their automatic bid to the regular season champion (which sort of makes the conference tournament worthless)
Here's a list of this year's conference champions. This of course effects the bubble dramatically when a low seed in a conference tournament (such as Creighton this year, the #8 seed in the MVC) knocks off a champion who would qualify for an at-large bid:
2012 Conference Automatic bids
Dayton - Atlantic 10
Georgia Tech - ACC Champion
Stony Brook - AMEast Champion
Belmont - Atlantic Sun Champion
Purdue - Big Ten Champion
Missouri - Big XII Champion
St John's - Big East Champion
Coastal Carolina - Big South Champion
Cal State Fullerton - Big West
UNC Wilmington - Colonial Champion
UAB - Conference USA Champion
Utah Valley - Great West Champion
Valpraiso - Horizon Champion
Cornell - Ivy League Champion
Manhattan - MAAC Champion
Kent State - MAC Champion
Bethune-Cookman - MEAC Champion
Creighton - MVC Champion
New Mexico - MWC Champion
Sacred Heart - NEC Champion
Austin Peay - OVC Champion
Arizona - PAC-12 Regular Season Champion
Army - Patriot Champion
Mississippi St - SEC Championship
Samford - SoCon Championship
UT Arlington - Southland Champion
Oral Roberts - Summit Champion
Louisiana-Monroe - Sun Belt Champion
Prairie View A&M - SWAC Champion
Fresno State- WAC Championship
At-Large bids
As you can see, roughly 30 of the spots are taken by conference champions, leaving the second half of the field for at-large selections. This is generally selected through RPI, record, conference performance, SoS, etc.
Also, if you get in by winning a weak conference, just like the NCAA Basketball tournament, that doesn't assure you a high seed or an easy regional. You may be a four seed, and you will probably get sent to the closest regional possible. This isn't always possible, but geography does have a large impact on seeding.
June 1st-4th - REGIONALS - 64 teams
The NCAA tournament begins with 16 regionals, at 16 home-school (or nearby in the case of teams with bad home facilities) locations. The 16 host locations are chosen on a criteria of: regular season performance, RPI, conference regular season/tournament championships, fair distribution across region, facility, expected fan support/bid (aka, how much money is paid to host said regional), rewarding teams who played tough schedules etc.
It's also worth noting that you DO NOT have to be a #1 seed in your regional to host. The NCAA sometimes sends teams deserving of a Top 16 seed on the road, if their facility doesn't work, their bid wasn't good enough, or they want to promote baseball a region with no other regionals.
Note the NCAA announces host sites on Sunday before the regionals. The full field is announced Monday morning at Noon EST on ESPN.
Here's this year's 16 host sites:
Baton Rouge, La. — LSU (43-16)
Chapel Hill, N.C. — North Carolina (44-14)
Charlottesville, Va. — Virginia (38-17)
College Station, Texas — Texas A&M (42-16)
Columbia, S.C. — South Carolina (40-17)
Coral Gables, Fla. — Miami (Fla.) (36-21)
Eugene, Ore. — Oregon (42-16)
Gainesville, Fla. – Florida (42-18)
Gary, Ind. — Purdue (44-12)
Houston, Texas — Rice (40-17)
Los Angeles, Calif. — UCLA (41-14)
Palo Alto, Calif. — Stanford (37-16)
Raleigh, N.C. — North Carolina State (39-17)
Tallahassee, Fla. — Florida State (43-15)
Tucson, Ariz. — Arizona (37-17)
Waco, Texas — Baylor (44-14)
Purdue is hosting in Gary as their brand new ballpark isn't ready for the tournament this year. Coral Gables is a confusing selection as well.
THE REST OF THE FIELD
Will be announced, including seeding and national seeds, tomorrow at noon EST on ESPN.
Seeding
Each regional has four teams, and they are seeded 1, 2, 3, 4. The next section will describe the tournament process.
There are also eight (8) National Seeds, with specific seedings (1-8). These teams cannot meet each other until the College World Series in Omaha, and their regionals/super regionals are seeded against each other (ie, if the #1 national seed, and the #8 national seed both make it to Omaha, they would play there in the first game).
National Seeds have an added bonus of being guaranteed to host a Super Regional at their home park if they win their regional
Regional Tournament Example Schedule - WILL BE UPDATED
The #1 seed can elect if it wants to play the early game or the night game on day one of the regional. Most teams will select the early game, though weather may change that in the deep south.
Friday - June 1st
Game 1: #1 seed vs. #4 Seed
Game 2: #2 Seed vs. #3 seed
Saturday - June 2nd
Game 3: Game 1 loser vs. Game 2 loser
Game 4: Game 1 winner vs. Game 2 winner
Sunday - June 3rd
Game 5: Game 4 loser vs. Game 3 winner
Game 6: Game 5 winner vs. Game 4 winner
Monday - June 4th
Game 7: Game 5 winner vs Game 4 winner (IF NECESSARY)
Pretty standard double elimination bracket. The team last team standing without two losses is the Regional Champion and advances to the Super Regional round.
June 8th-11th - Super Regionals - 16 teams reamining
Super Regionals are Best of 3 series played between two regional winners. If a National Seed wins its regional, it hosts. If the national seed is eliminated during the regional, the Super Regional is awarded based on the bids that come in. Typically this will favor the other team that hosted a regional, but if a Super Regional contains two teams that were not hosts, it can get fun and end with games played in interesting/weak parks.
Super Regionals begin with one game played per day, the three game series finished over three days.
The first four super regionals begin on Friday, June 8th. The second four begin on Saturday June 9th. (the start dates correspond with which day of the College World Series you would start on) Each team that wins the three-game Super Regional series then advances to the college world series.
June 15th-June 23/24th - COLLEGE WORLD SERIES - 8 Teams remaining
The College World Series is hosted annually in Omaha, Nebraska, at TD Ameritrade Park (a brand new downtown ballpark that replaced the aging but classic Rosenblatt Stadium by the Omaha Zoo).
The best way to explain this, is imagine if you had two regionals occurring and intertwined at the same location, there are two separate brackets of four teams playing a double elimination tournament each. The winner of those brackets then meet in a Best of three series. Essentially we are repeating the Regional/Super regional process with the final 8 teams
whew....
That's a brief run-down. I'm reserving the post below to move some of this info down as we get the seedings tomorrow and i update the schedule
Of course, this year i'll be missing the whole CWS due to an out of the country vacation, but I'm excited to share my love for this time of year with ya'll
But for a rare breed of us, it's not about March, it's about June.
What is this you say? Welcome to the NCAA Men's Baseball Tournament. A four weekend event (with some midweek games), that determines college baseball's national champion. Though this tournament may seem a bit weird to you if you've never watched it before, so we'll try to explain with this thread.
The tournament
The NCAA Baseball Tournament is essentially a four-round tournament:
Regionals - 64 teams
Super Regionals - 16 teams
College World Series - 8 teams
College World Series Final - 2 teams
64 teams enter, only one leaves. It's double elimination IN EACH ROUND. So you can technically win the tournament with as many as four losses (if you lose once in each round).
Each conference has an automatic bid into the tournament. Most conferences reward this to the tournament champion. Some conferences (like the Pac-12) do not have a conference tournament and/or choose to reward their automatic bid to the regular season champion (which sort of makes the conference tournament worthless)
Here's a list of this year's conference champions. This of course effects the bubble dramatically when a low seed in a conference tournament (such as Creighton this year, the #8 seed in the MVC) knocks off a champion who would qualify for an at-large bid:
2012 Conference Automatic bids
Dayton - Atlantic 10
Georgia Tech - ACC Champion
Stony Brook - AMEast Champion
Belmont - Atlantic Sun Champion
Purdue - Big Ten Champion
Missouri - Big XII Champion
St John's - Big East Champion
Coastal Carolina - Big South Champion
Cal State Fullerton - Big West
UNC Wilmington - Colonial Champion
UAB - Conference USA Champion
Utah Valley - Great West Champion
Valpraiso - Horizon Champion
Cornell - Ivy League Champion
Manhattan - MAAC Champion
Kent State - MAC Champion
Bethune-Cookman - MEAC Champion
Creighton - MVC Champion
New Mexico - MWC Champion
Sacred Heart - NEC Champion
Austin Peay - OVC Champion
Arizona - PAC-12 Regular Season Champion
Army - Patriot Champion
Mississippi St - SEC Championship
Samford - SoCon Championship
UT Arlington - Southland Champion
Oral Roberts - Summit Champion
Louisiana-Monroe - Sun Belt Champion
Prairie View A&M - SWAC Champion
Fresno State- WAC Championship
At-Large bids
As you can see, roughly 30 of the spots are taken by conference champions, leaving the second half of the field for at-large selections. This is generally selected through RPI, record, conference performance, SoS, etc.
Also, if you get in by winning a weak conference, just like the NCAA Basketball tournament, that doesn't assure you a high seed or an easy regional. You may be a four seed, and you will probably get sent to the closest regional possible. This isn't always possible, but geography does have a large impact on seeding.
June 1st-4th - REGIONALS - 64 teams
The NCAA tournament begins with 16 regionals, at 16 home-school (or nearby in the case of teams with bad home facilities) locations. The 16 host locations are chosen on a criteria of: regular season performance, RPI, conference regular season/tournament championships, fair distribution across region, facility, expected fan support/bid (aka, how much money is paid to host said regional), rewarding teams who played tough schedules etc.
It's also worth noting that you DO NOT have to be a #1 seed in your regional to host. The NCAA sometimes sends teams deserving of a Top 16 seed on the road, if their facility doesn't work, their bid wasn't good enough, or they want to promote baseball a region with no other regionals.
Note the NCAA announces host sites on Sunday before the regionals. The full field is announced Monday morning at Noon EST on ESPN.
Here's this year's 16 host sites:
Baton Rouge, La. — LSU (43-16)
Chapel Hill, N.C. — North Carolina (44-14)
Charlottesville, Va. — Virginia (38-17)
College Station, Texas — Texas A&M (42-16)
Columbia, S.C. — South Carolina (40-17)
Coral Gables, Fla. — Miami (Fla.) (36-21)
Eugene, Ore. — Oregon (42-16)
Gainesville, Fla. – Florida (42-18)
Gary, Ind. — Purdue (44-12)
Houston, Texas — Rice (40-17)
Los Angeles, Calif. — UCLA (41-14)
Palo Alto, Calif. — Stanford (37-16)
Raleigh, N.C. — North Carolina State (39-17)
Tallahassee, Fla. — Florida State (43-15)
Tucson, Ariz. — Arizona (37-17)
Waco, Texas — Baylor (44-14)
Purdue is hosting in Gary as their brand new ballpark isn't ready for the tournament this year. Coral Gables is a confusing selection as well.
THE REST OF THE FIELD
Will be announced, including seeding and national seeds, tomorrow at noon EST on ESPN.
Seeding
Each regional has four teams, and they are seeded 1, 2, 3, 4. The next section will describe the tournament process.
There are also eight (8) National Seeds, with specific seedings (1-8). These teams cannot meet each other until the College World Series in Omaha, and their regionals/super regionals are seeded against each other (ie, if the #1 national seed, and the #8 national seed both make it to Omaha, they would play there in the first game).
National Seeds have an added bonus of being guaranteed to host a Super Regional at their home park if they win their regional
Regional Tournament Example Schedule - WILL BE UPDATED
The #1 seed can elect if it wants to play the early game or the night game on day one of the regional. Most teams will select the early game, though weather may change that in the deep south.
Friday - June 1st
Game 1: #1 seed vs. #4 Seed
Game 2: #2 Seed vs. #3 seed
Saturday - June 2nd
Game 3: Game 1 loser vs. Game 2 loser
Game 4: Game 1 winner vs. Game 2 winner
Sunday - June 3rd
Game 5: Game 4 loser vs. Game 3 winner
Game 6: Game 5 winner vs. Game 4 winner
Monday - June 4th
Game 7: Game 5 winner vs Game 4 winner (IF NECESSARY)
Pretty standard double elimination bracket. The team last team standing without two losses is the Regional Champion and advances to the Super Regional round.
June 8th-11th - Super Regionals - 16 teams reamining
Super Regionals are Best of 3 series played between two regional winners. If a National Seed wins its regional, it hosts. If the national seed is eliminated during the regional, the Super Regional is awarded based on the bids that come in. Typically this will favor the other team that hosted a regional, but if a Super Regional contains two teams that were not hosts, it can get fun and end with games played in interesting/weak parks.
Super Regionals begin with one game played per day, the three game series finished over three days.
The first four super regionals begin on Friday, June 8th. The second four begin on Saturday June 9th. (the start dates correspond with which day of the College World Series you would start on) Each team that wins the three-game Super Regional series then advances to the college world series.
June 15th-June 23/24th - COLLEGE WORLD SERIES - 8 Teams remaining
The College World Series is hosted annually in Omaha, Nebraska, at TD Ameritrade Park (a brand new downtown ballpark that replaced the aging but classic Rosenblatt Stadium by the Omaha Zoo).
The best way to explain this, is imagine if you had two regionals occurring and intertwined at the same location, there are two separate brackets of four teams playing a double elimination tournament each. The winner of those brackets then meet in a Best of three series. Essentially we are repeating the Regional/Super regional process with the final 8 teams
whew....
That's a brief run-down. I'm reserving the post below to move some of this info down as we get the seedings tomorrow and i update the schedule
Of course, this year i'll be missing the whole CWS due to an out of the country vacation, but I'm excited to share my love for this time of year with ya'll
