NC State baseball improves standing on NCAA bubble

Following an extra-inning, 8-7 win over Duke Tuesday night in the ACC Tournament, NC State baseball coach Elliott Avent expressed confidence that his squad has done enough to get into the NCAA Tournament. Of course, Avent also acknowledged feeling the same way last year, when the Pack was surprisingly snubbed.

“If we’re not in, I don’t understand the whole concept,” Avent said. “You’ve got the SEC and the ACC, the two best conferences in the country. RPI’s always one and two, always neck and neck. The thing is they’re the best teams in the country.

“They’ll say, ‘Well, you’re 13-16 in this league.’ Ole Miss went 14-16 in the SEC last year and lost the first game [of SEC tournament] and won the national championship.”

Ole Miss also happened to be the team that went into the field ahead of NC State.

Baseball America’s updated mock bracket has given the Wolfpack some cushion, while D1Baseball.com’s has not updated since Monday when NC State was the last team in the field.

TheWolfpacker.com took a listing of the last four teams in and first four teams out from the most updated projected fields by D1Baseball.com and Baseball America, the latter of which included an additional next four out. The chart below includes the teams’ respective RPI, strength of schedule (SOS), non-conference SOS (NSOS) and records against RPI teams 1-25, 26-50, 51-100, 101-200 and 200 and over.

The teams are listed in order of RPI ranking.

TeamRPISOSNSOS1-2526-5051-100101-200200+NC State18221315-113-510-23-014-0Oklahoma3516406-87-34-512-82-0UC Irvine4378720-04-214-1011-46-1Arizona45301043-46-810-99-24-0Virginia Tech47261265-141-213-55-16-1Notre Dame51402497-83-36-99-25-1Arizona State5237710-58-1410-37-16-0Xavier 5389322-61-76-014-812-1Kansas State55531572-59-85-14-714-2Texas State56681431-25-69-108-212-2Elon5960394-42-25-412-69-4Louisiana-Lafayette61841333-42-55-513-514-1Rutgers64101731-61-26-316-79-4Cal State Fullerton6546191-28-67-94-49-0UTSA681361350-31-05-327-115-1

NC State baseball has some areas that stand out in the Pack’s favor.

The Wolfpack is the best from the RPI standpoint. A year ago, when NC State was surprisingly left out of the field, the Pack was No. 35 in RPI. NC State was the highest-rated RPI team to miss the field then.

Also of note is that NC State has one of the better overall strength of schedule of the 15 teams listed, checking in at second best.

The biggest issue that the NC State baseball may face is the lack of success against top teams. The Wolfpack is 5-11 against top 25 rated opponents, and when extended to top 50, the record is 8-16. That is a 33.3 percent winning percentage vs. the top 50 in the RPI.

Thursday evening’s showdown with Miami (RPI 19) could help improve that, as would Notre Dame (RPI 51) improving its standing by a spot. The Pack went 2-1 against the Irish in the regular season.

Only Arizona State (8-19), Rutgers (3-13), UTSA (1-3), Virginia Tech (6-16) and Xavier (3-13) have worse winning percentages.

How much it matters is debatable, but NC State was one of the best teams at beating opponents it was supposed to win against, which in a fickle sport like baseball is not an easy accomplishment. The Pack went 27-2 against teams ranked 50 or below in the RPI. Every other team compared to NC State has at least four losses to such rated squads, and 11 of the 15 have double-digit defeats.

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