Who should take the mound on Friday vs. Purdue?

huskerswrkhavoc said:
Unless Purdue doesn't win the conference tourney, the Big Ten is a one bid league this year.. Need to win the tourney.
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Not so sure about that. Remember that other factors come into play when making these decisions--Nebraska baseball puts butts in seats, bottom line. The further north of 40 wins Nebraska is, the more likely we get in, regardless if we win the conference or not.

Let's also remember that it's been BA's job, among others, to slag on B1G Baseball for the better part of a decade. Change doesn't come naturally to these folks.

 
matthew_m_g said:
huskerswrkhavoc said:
Unless Purdue doesn't win the conference tourney, the Big Ten is a one bid league this year.. Need to win the tourney.
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Not so sure about that. Remember that other factors come into play when making these decisions--Nebraska baseball puts butts in seats, bottom line. The further north of 40 wins Nebraska is, the more likely we get in, regardless if we win the conference or not.

Let's also remember that it's been BA's job, among others, to slag on B1G Baseball for the better part of a decade. Change doesn't come naturally to these folks.
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I am. The further north of 40 wins? Really? We can only lose TWO GAMES to be able to get to 40 the rest of the way out. To all of you counting the UNK game, it doesn't count towards our win record that way, not a D1 win. If we win out, yea, we'll make the tourney. Will we win out? No way. That's asinine to think that we will with our struggles this year. That being said, 16-2 would still be an amazing finish, and I think most people around here would be happy with a more realistic 12-6. However 36 wins (along with the accompanying RPI, currently 71) does not get us into the NCAAs out of the Big Ten. Hence, we need the auto bid to make it.

 
No, excluding a 40+ win Nebraska from the post-season would only provide fuel to the complaints the Minnesota coach levied and the B1G tacitly approved of.

As for this weekend, if we take two or three of three from Purdue, we're going to see Purdue out of the Top 25, and no one take their place from the B1G. If anything, it will be a 'told ya so' moment for the hacks currently covering college baseball, instead of looking at the realization that the B1G actually is a decent league at the top this year.

As for North of 40, it's entirely possible and plausible. Don't forget that we will have at least two B1G Tourney games to add to the number of games left.

 
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i think we all know the only "for sure" means of a post season is to win the auto bid.

Still, being the highlight on the espn weekend preview, getting pump from Baseball America, having a chance to beat a projected "possible" national seed and actually having some national interest personalities projecting a series win and reaching the conference championship should suffice for an at large bid is something to look forward to. It's been entirely too long since we've last had this type of optimism.

Truth is, winning the remainder of our series (including this one) is the most important thing. We can't lose another and in doing that, post season or not, we'll have achieved that which we haven't done since our last world series appearance. It's speculation to think 40 wins puts us in the post season and honestly, losing this series isn't the end of the season but it would be a momentum killer. Win it and who knows where our lads will end.

 
There are 64 post season spots.

There are 32 auto bids.

The SEC, ACC, Big 12, Pac 12 will each get at least 5 qualifiers, of which one is the auto, so round down to 4 thereby absorbing 16 more.

32 + 16 = 48 spots filled, leaving 16 remaining.

Looking at the most recent conference rpi:

Boyds WorldLast updated: Thu Apr 19 06:30:07 2012

Division I Overall

Rank Rating W L W L Conference

1 0.589 275 174 277 174 ACC

2 0.586 289 158 290 159 SEC

3 0.574 232 149 232 149 Pac 12

4 0.547 192 135 197 135 Big 12

5 0.546 194 139 194 139 C-USA

6 0.545 178 131 181 131 WCC

7 0.536 224 181 224 181 Southern

8 0.533 172 113 175 113 MVC

9 0.528 139 109 139 112 WAC

10 0.527 150 156 150 156 Big West

11 0.524 208 173 208 173 Atlantic Sun

12 0.518 210 180 215 181 Big Ten

13 0.516 210 213 217 213 Southland

14 0.509 238 202 239 202 Big East

15 0.507 186 183 187 183 Sun Belt

16 0.501 220 197 220 199 Big South

Division I Overall

Rank Rating W L W L Conference

17 0.498 203 202 204 202 CAA

18 0.496 83 98 84 98 Mountain West

19 0.481 88 88 89 88 Independents

20 0.477 149 197 161 199 OVC

21 0.471 214 241 215 242 Atlantic 10

22 0.460 174 245 183 246 MAC

23 0.459 104 155 106 155 Ivy

24 0.450 81 120 89 121 Horizon

25 0.450 110 121 112 121 Patriot

26 0.444 130 190 130 190 MAAC

27 0.440 81 116 84 116 America East

28 0.437 138 189 138 189 NEC

29 0.435 92 137 98 140 Summit

30 0.418 82 148 91 148 Great West

31 0.413 121 210 149 219 SWAC

32 0.389 106 223 109 223 MEAC
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Gives us a reasonable assumption of how many invites the BIG will get. Remembering there is only 16 at large left, I think its safe to assume Purdue is the only BIG ball club that could get an "at large" invite.

The conference (BIG) will continue to be under-rated as long as teams like tOSU continue to lose home games to teams like Xavier and Cinncy. Minnesota losing to both SDSU and NDSU (two to them) and Indiana who has had an atrocious non-conference record.

 
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Again, RPI is only part of the equation, Hacker. Hell, the last time we got an at-large, we didn't deserve it--we squeaked in because of our name and our ability as a program to put butts in seats. Our name and ability to get fan support still carries a lot of cache with the NCAA--we just don't have the luxury of leaning on that anymore in the B1G--now we need a high number of wins, including non-cons.

I'm not saying it's a sure thing or anything close to it--just that it's not all gloom and doom as you and others want to make it out to be.

 
I'd agree with you had it not been for a sweep to Gonzaga, series split with Cal and a lost series to Northwestern, series split with Northern Colorado, Kansas St struggling tis season, tOSU losing to Xavier and Cinncy not to mention the poor non-conference showing from the rest of the BIG. The difference now vs the Big 12 years is the non-conference wins. The Big 12 won those games, including the skers and therefore even with fewer wins we benefited from the conference as a whole. Its not that way now. Truth be, if we can't beat Northwestern on road why do you feel the committee would be screwing us if we have 40 wins and neither a conference championship or conference tourney championship? 40 wins with our schedule should have been expected.

 
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