NCAA Tournament Bracket Prediction 7.0: Can the SEC Send 14 Teams?

Can the SEC realistically get 14 teams into the NCAA Tournament?

We’re already at the point where 13 SEC teams getting into the field of 64 is practically guaranteed. More than half of the conference is ranked, 11 of the 16 teams have an RPI ranking inside the top 25 and 15 are ranked in the top 64.

If you listen to a SEC baseball game broadcast, you’ll have heard 13 wins is what an SEC team will need to get into the NCAA Tournament. Ten of the conference’s teams already reach that total and four more are within three games.

We’ve already covered who has the easiest final stretch in the last two weeks before tournaments begin and how Mississippi State and Texas A&M are practically guaranteed to reach 13 conference wins because each has a series against Missouri left to play. Florida has 11 SEC wins and getting two wins in six games against Texas and Alabama isn’t guaranteed, but it’s certainly possible.

That leaves Kentucky at 10-14 in SEC games and the Wildcats’ final two SEC opponents are Oklahoma and Vanderbilt. Can they get three wins in those series? Based on how this season has gone, so far, it wouldn’t be surprising.

However, what if the NCAA selection committee had to make its field of 64 right now? Would Kentucky get an invite?

Yes. Or at least, the Wildcats do in my latest NCAA Baseball Tournament Prediction. You can see the full bracket below, but I will say Kentucky was the last team in my bracket. It came down to Kentucky, Western Kentucky or Kansas State and I almost went with the Hilltoppers. But that 213 strength of schedule is glaring.

You can check out version 7.0 of my field of 64 below. But here are a few notes and thoughts about this week’s predicted bracket:

• Here’s how many teams each conference has in the bracket: SEC = 14, ACC = 9, Big 12 = 5, Big 10 = 4, Big East = 3, Sun Belt = 3, Big West = 2 and Southland = 2.
• Welcome Miami to the field of 64 everyone. The Canes have won their last six games, including two against NC State, and have a favorable final stretch with series against Virginia and Notre Dame.
• USC has Trojan-horsed itself into a No. 2 seed, which is somewhat disappointing because I wanted to put them in the same regional as Troy, who is locked in as No. 2 seed as a ranked team.
• This week’s “region of death” I’ll say is the Fayetteville Regional. Arkansas is one of the best teams in the nation, Dallas Baptist is really good, Georgia Tech is sneaky good (29th in RPI) and Missouri State beat the Razorbacks earlier this season.

As always here’s my usual reminder: This isn’t a projection. This is what I think the bracket would look like if the selection committee made its selections today. I use the D1Baseball Top 25 Rankings (although this week I debated switching to Baseball America because of the No. 1 ranking) for the 16 national seeds and use current conference leaders to determine who receives the automatic tournament bids. Also, it seems fair to state that the teams ranked No. 16-25 will earn invites to the tournament. So, once those spots were filled, I was left with 15 at-large bids to hand out. With that disclaimer out of the way, here’s bracket 7.0:

NCAA Baseball Tournament Prediction 7.0:

Vanderbilt Commodores On SI: