How Mississippi State's RPI helps its NCAA Tournament resume

Originally posted on Mississippi State Bulldogs on SI
By Taylor Hodges | Last updated May 13, 2025 2:09 PM ET

As predicted, Mississippi State is back in many NCAA Baseball Tournament Predictions. But how does a team go from firing its coach because it might not make the tournament, to being a near-lock?

RPI.

Playing in the SEC helps too, but strength of schedule is part of the Rating Performance Index’s (RPI) formula and being in the SEC significantly helps with that ranking.

When it comes time to make the NCAA Tournament selections, the selection committee will rely on RPI to help make its decisions. Is it the only stat or rankings that’ll be used? No, but it’s one of, if not the most important ones.

The Bulldogs have seen their RPI go up in recent weeks, mainly thanks to a 6-1 record since firing Chris Lemonis including series wins against Kentucky and Ole Miss. Mississippi State’s current RPI would put it easily into the tournament, if it were the only factor. It’s not, but for the sake of this article, let’s pretend it is.

For those who don’t know, the tournament field of 64 teams is divided between 29 automatic qualifiers (conference champions) and 35 at-large bids. You can’t just take the top 64 teams in RPI because there are several schools whose RPI will be way beyond 64th (Bethune-Cookman, SWAC’s current leader, has a 226 RPI ranking).

It’s also a good bet that top 25 teams, who aren’t automatic qualifiers, will get. Of the top 25, eight teams would get automatic bids and the remaining 17 get at-large invites. That brings our total number of teams to 46, leaving 18 more at-large bids.

Now, we’ll take all the remaining teams, and pick the 18 highest RPI ranked teams, which would be:

TCU (16)
Ole Miss (17)
Georgia Tech (23)
Wake Forest (26)
Oklahoma (27)
Miami (28)
Mississippi State (32)
Kentucky (33)
Kansas (34)
Cincinnati (35)
Kansas State (36)
Western Kentucky (38)
Arizona (39)
UT Rio Grande Valley (41)
Southern California (42)
Xavier (43)
Arizona State (44)
Cal Poly (45)

Based on that, Mississippi State is in the tournament without much worry and it’s a reason why fans should feel good about the Bulldogs’ chances. Even take into consideration some of those last teams may get picked over other teams (like Creighton and SE Louisiana, neither of whom make our hypothetical tournament).

But don’t start making travel plans just yet. There’s still one more series left to play and should Missouri do to the Bulldogs what it did to Texas A&M last week, the Bulldogs may be in trouble.

The Aggies were swept, at home, by the previously-winless-in-SEC-games Missouri. As a result, their RPI dropped 24 spots (from 36th down to 60th) and the Aggies are back to being out of the field of 64.

The same thing can happen to Mississippi State.