Selection Sunday/Monday: Will Case Get In?
It’s the big day, the numero uno honcho, the head cheese: the NCAA selection committee is selecting the at-large bids for the division 3 tournament as I write this. The Spartans finished 30-13 and have a good shot at a bid. Below, you’ll see the selection process described, and my (admittedly biased) assessment of Case Western Reserve’s chances. Also, did I just semi-quote Airplane 2? Wow.
As usual, D3Baseball has the go-to sites/articles for this. The article here has the complete process that I will summarize now. There are 55 teams total selected, of which 38 come from automatic qualifiers from conferences. The next two “Pool B” bids are selected at-large from the four conferences that do not have enough teams for automatic qualification as well as independents. The remaining 15 “Pool C” bids are then selected at-large from all the unselected teams left. How are teams selected? That D3baseball article has all the criteria, but the combination of record against teams in your region and strength of schedule is a big factor. Then, teams are placed in regionals of varying sizes for double elimination tournaments. This placement is almost always done to have as few plane flights as possible, so with the dearth of qualifying teams in the west, the farther east you are, the more competitive it is for bids and the more likely a deserving team is left out.
So, do I think Case will get in? I think so, but it seems less likely than it did a couple weeks ago. First, a few teams (Messiah, Rhode Island College, Frostburg St.) won their conference tournament that probably would not have received an at-large bid over teams that probably will. Another bad sign is that Case’s ranking in the regional rankings dropped from third to fifth over the last couple weeks, because teams below Case have won. I still think Case will get in, because the qualifications are there, although the nature of the beast, with objective criteria but a committee arguing, could very well mean it would go like D3Baseball has it, with Case left out.
I’ll update this post whenever the field is announced, then I’ll have a reaction post Monday night.
