Mississippi State third baseman Ace Reese (3) fields a bunt by Texas A&M second baseman Ben Royo (10) but makes a wild throw to first in the first round of the SEC Baseball Tournament at the Hoover Met. Gary Cosby Jr. / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Mississippi State faces difficult path to advancing out of its NCAA Regional

Originally posted on Mississippi State Bulldogs on SI
By Taylor Hodges | Last updated May 26, 2025 4:35 PM ET

There wasn’t much drama for Mississippi State on selection day for the 2025 NCAA Baseball Tournament.

Everyone knew the Bulldogs would be in the tournament as a No. 3 seed. The only unanswered question was which NCAA Regional they would be headed to. We now know the answer to that question.

Mississippi State is headed to the Tallahassee Regional with No. 9 national seed Florida State as the host and Northeastern and Bethune-Cookman also joining as the No. 2 and No. 4 seeds.

On paper, that looks like one of the toughest regionals in the tournament. Florida State nearly became the No. 1 team in the nation when Texas got swept by Arkansas. Northeastern owns the longest winning streak and a pitching staff that leads the nation in ERA (2.92).

But if you take the RPI rankings of each team in a regional and average those out, the Tallahassee Regional is at the bottom. Here’s how the averages rank for each regional:

Based on that metric, the Tallahassee Regional is one of the easiest. Only Auburn and LSU have easier paths to winning their regionals. But Mississippi State (and the other teams in the Tallahassee Regional) has a much harder path than what the rankings above show.

Florida State is one of the 10 best teams in the nation, Northeastern is a team nobody wants to face, Mississippi State has been hot since firing its coach and Bethune-Cookman is…well, they’re the owner of an awesome walk-off, conference championship moment.

OH MY LORD BETHUNE-COOKMAN WALK OFF 3 RUN TANKKK TO PUNCH THEIR TICKET pic.twitter.com/GrlySfeY6o
— 11Point7 College Baseball (@11point7) May 25, 2025

So, what’s the point of this whole exercise? Two points

Point A: RPI isn’t everything. Baseball has more stats than any other sport and it can be complicated. So, it’s easy to understand why we rely on certain stats that are based on formulations on of those stats. And there is a role for a metric like RPI. Is it perfect? No. But what stat is? It’s fine to use RPI as a basis for making tournament selections or determining which regional is the toughest, but it shouldn’t be the only metric.

Point B: Mississippi State is going to have very hard time winning this regional, despite the low average RPI ranking.