NCAA Tournament Bracket Prediction 10.0: Who's About to Have a Bad Monday?

Would you like some insight into how a random sports writer goes about making these final choices? No? Too bad, because here’s how I made final choices.

Who Are the Final Four In?

After the automatic qualifiers and obvious at-large bid recipients, there are only four at-large bids up for grabs.

Xavier and Miami are the easy choices. The final two spots are a lot harder.

With the goal of helping you, the reader, get an insight into how to these decisions are, let’s play the blind-resume game. I’ll list the tournament resumes (information from D1Baseball.com) for six teams and you decide which two should make the tournament?

So, who gets in? Depends on what you value the most.

Team A and Team B have the two highest RPIs. But Team D has four fewer wins than Team B with a tougher schedule. And nobody has been better in Quad 1 games than Team E. Team F has the most wins, which when combined with relatively similar RPI rankings and SOS, should out them in the discussion, right?

It’s a tough choice, but here’s how I came to my final decision:

• Team A is in based on the combination of its record, RPI rank and SOS rank;
• Team B is out, not because they aren’t worthy of a spot in the tournament, but because others are more deserving;
• Team C and Team F just don’t pass the eye test to beat the final two contenders;
• Team E is an interesting team. Very high SOS, but five fewer wins than Team D; and
• Team D, though, doesn’t have one of the worst series losses on its resume (do you know who Team E is now?).

So that’s how I decided to put Team A and Team D in my final NCAA baseball tournament prediction bracket. Hopefully, I’ve either helped you gain an insight into how tough these choices or given you something to laugh about. Either way, it’s be fun. We’ll learn the real thing at 11 a.m. Monday on ESPN2.

For those curious (or didn't figure out themselves), here are the blind resume teams:

• Team A: Southern California
• Team B: Troy
• Team C: Notre Dame
• Team D: Arizona State
• Team E: Texas A&M|
• Team F: Jacksonville State

Final NCAA Baseball Tournament Prediction

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