We’re through the super regionals, and have a CWS field. Here’s a recap of the supers.
Resource links to help with this:
- Top 25 rankings d1baseball, baseballamerica, and usatoday Coaches poll.
- WarrenNolan’s RPI rankings
- Here’s D1Baseball.com’s Tournament Central, my favorite place to track the tourney.
- Here’s the NCAA.com field of 64 Bracket with some great data points at NCAA.com and an easier-to-read bracket.
First, lets recap the Supers.
- Louisville vs Miami: Louisville dominated visiting Miami (note: I thought Miami would get the host) 8-1 in a game where all the scoring happened in the first few innings. Miami took back game two to force the tie-breaker game Sunday. In game three, Louisville clawed back to take a close 3-2 win and advance.
- #8 Oregon State v #9 Florida State: FSU let one get away in game one, giving up 3 runs in the ninth to send the game to extras, then watching an RBI single allow OSU to walk them off. Brutal. FSU turned around to win game 2 and force the decider. In the final, both teams ran out of pitching and played to an old-school pre-BBCOR aluminum game score of 14-10 as OSU advances.
- #5 UNC v Arizona: UNC Destroyed AZ in game one 18-2. AZ fought back to win game two in a slugfest to force the 3rd game. In the final, Arizona shocked the national seed and top ranked UNC with three runs in the 8th inning to steal a 4-3 win and to claim the CWS spot.
- #4 Auburn v #13 Coastal Carolina: Coastal Carolina shocked Auburn in game one, edging them with a run in the 10th to win in extras. They followed it up with a 4-1 game two win to be the first team to punch their ticket to the CWS and to prove naysayers wrong.
- #3 Arkansas v #14 Tennessee; Arkansas got a close game 1 win 4-3, got to Doyle easily in game two and cruise into the CWS.
- #6 LSU v West Virginia: LSU battered their way to a game 1 win 16-9 and was never troubled in game two to advance easily.
- Duke v Murray State: Host Duke opened with a win, taming Murray State’s bats 7-4. Murray State got back to bashing in game two, winning 19-9 and force a Monday finish. There, Murray State persevered, even with a crazy overturned call at the end that forced them to win twice, to advance as a #4 seed, a rarity in the college game.
- UT-San Antonio v #15 UCLA: UCLA won 5-2 in the first, then blanked UTSA in the second to move on.
Super Regional Predictions versus Actuals
- predicted Miami, FSU, UNC, Auburn, Arkansas, LSU, Murray State, UTSA
- actuals: Louisville, OSU, Arizona, CCU, Arkansas, LSU, Murray State, UCLA
My predictions were awful: I went just 3 for 8 after going 8-for-8 last year in the supers.
Stats/Observations of the 8 Super Regionals.
- 5 out of 8 Super Regional Hosts to advance.
- 4 regionals went to the 3rd/deciding game.
- Conference Breakdown of the eight Advancers: 2 SEC, 1 ACC, 1 Big10, 1 Big12, 1 Independent, 1 Sun Belt, and 1 MVC. wow. What great distribution. If we were playing by the old rules … there’d be three Pac12 teams here.
- Murray State to the CWS as a #4 regional seed is super rare: it’s only happened three other times since the CWS expanded to 64 teams in 1999. Fresno State (2008, who frigging won the CWS), Stony Brook (2012), and most recently, Oral Roberts (2023).
So, your 2024 CWS Field (with original national seeds driving the teams):
- Group 1 (1,4,5,8): Louisville, Coastal Carolina, Arizona, #8 Oregon State
- Group 2 (2,3,6,7): #15 UCLA, #3 Arkansas, #6 LSU, Murray State
So, we have a pretty lopsided CWS field. Group 1 features just one national seed in OSU, while group two features three National seeds plus the crazy Cinderella Murray State.
RPIs of the CWS field: Here’s the Live/updated RPI of the field, plus the pre-CWS tournament RPI for those teams who were seeds.
- Arkansas: #1 (started #5)
- Coastal Carolina #3 (Started #8)
- Oregon State: #5 (started #7)
- UCLA #9 (started #15)
- LSU #11 (started #10)
- Arizona #19
- Louisville #29
- Murray State: #53
CCU was pretty underseeded going into the tourney and probably should have been a top 8 seed, and now they’re vindicated with a live RPI of #3, making them the favorite in the group 1.
Performance of 1st Round projected players in the Super Regionals:
I’ll summarize the performance of the few 1-1 candidates we care about in my “check-in” post coming soon.
My CWS Predictions
Top half: I think it comes down to Coastal versus Oregon State, with Oregon State heading to final.
Bottom Half: Hard not to go with an all SEC final here, with things setup for the SEC teams to be on opposite sides of the group. LSU beat Arkansas at home in a series in early May, but on a neutral field I sense Arkansas bashes their way forward. LSU only has one Kade Anderson.
Final: Arkansas over OSU