Mississippi State's RPI Makes Hosting Case, Hoover's Just Gravy

Metrics Back the Bulldogs

Here's what matters when the D1 Baseball committee sits down with their spreadsheets: the Diamond Dawgs carry an RPI of No. 13.

They won 39 games during the regular season. They finished 16-14 in the SEC, right in the top half of one of the most competitive leagues in the sport.

In a year where the conference was so bunched up that the standings didn't fully sort themselves until the final day of the regular season, finishing where Mississippi State finished means something.

The Bulldogs deserve to host an NCAA Regional. The numbers say so. The schedule they played says so.

If there are seven SEC schools getting hosting spots this postseason — a realistic possibility — State should be the last one in that group.

Nobody in the league ran away with the conference race. Georgia was the lone team to reach 20 wins inside the SEC, going 23-7.

After that it was a traffic jam. Mississippi State was right in the middle of it, fighting every weekend, losing some tight ones and winning some they probably shouldn't have.

That kind of parity doesn't diminish a 16-14 SEC record. It shows it mean something and nearly everybody else has dealt with it, too.

One-Run Losses Tell the Story

What keeps the Bulldogs out of the national seed discussion is the inability to close out the tightest games.

Those one-run losses — and there have been plenty — are exactly why State won't be inside that top-eight envelope when the bracket drops a week from Monday.

It's a baseball problem O'Connor's staff will spend the offseason fixing. Right now it's a real limitation.

The A&M series was the clearest example yet.

Mississippi State had the Aggies in front of them and a chance to make a statement. They needed some outside help around the country anyway and that help didn't show up.

The Bulldogs didn't help themselves either. You can't control what other teams do. You can control your own Saturday rubber game and State couldn't close it.

That said, O'Connor probably has a better idea than anyone what this team is capable of. He's seen it every day. He knows what the metrics show.

He knows what the margin looked like in those losses.

If there's a coach who understands how to evaluate a team's genuine quality against its won-loss record in close games, it's him.

What Hoover Means ... and Doesn't Mean

Getting to 40 wins would give the selection committee one more bullet point to work with.

A win in the SEC Tournament would be useful. It would quiet some skeptics and give O'Connor's team a little momentum heading into postseason play.

But State's hosting case doesn't hinge on what happens in Hoover. The committee looks at the full body of work and that body of work including an RPI of 13 with 39 wins in the SEC holds up.

It's also worth noting that the league changed the way committees evaluate SEC teams and their performance at the conference tournament.

That old barrier where an early Hoover exit could effectively knock a team out of NCAA Tournament consideration isn't what it used to be.

The season as a whole carries the weight.

SEC Tournament Draw Sets Up Interesting First Round

When Mississippi State takes the field in Hoover it'll be facing the winner of the Tennessee-South Carolina game.

That's a matchup with a curious history. The Bulldogs were swept by Tennessee earlier in the year. They also swept South Carolina.

Whatever team emerges from that first-round collision will be walking in with a recent loss on their resume against this exact Starkville program.

It's hard to find a real edge for either the Vols or the Gamecocks given that track record. The familiarity doesn't guarantee anything — this is the SEC in May — but it's not a bad place to start.

Hosting a regional is the goal.

It's what this program deserves based on what it's put together in O'Connor's first season. A run in Hoover would be a welcome bonus.

But the Dawgs' postseason standing was built over six months of SEC baseball and that foundation is solid enough to stand on its own.