One thing about the NCAA’s baseball tournament field is how there’s not any absolute criteria to lock down at-large selection.
This means other than the automatic berths that go either to the regular season conference champs or tournament winners? Everything becomes debatable when every new baseball committee conclaves for selection, seeding, and siting decisions.
So then who is the committee for 2025? The chairman is Jay Artigues (Southeastern Louisiana), Scott Dolson (Indiana), Jon Gilbert (East Carolina), Michael Alford (Florida State), Casey Scott (Kansas State), Jeremy McClain (Southern Miss), Greg Seitz (Jacksonville State), Randale Richmond (Kent State), Scott Leykam (Portland), and some feller name of Scott Stricklin (Florida).
More on some members in a moment. First let’s reprise this week’s tune that the Diamond Dogs have work to do if they intend heading to Hoover with real confidence.
We, meaning me in this case, have been insisting that 15 SEC wins will guarantee a berth. That’s been true ever since the league went to 30 games in 1996, though a check showed a 15-12 team in 1994 was left out. But that was in the 48-team field era.
Now with 64 the standard, breaking-even in the almighty SEC is a sure bid. So has been 14 wins for Mississippi State in 1998 and 2011 which produced good post-seasons in their own right.
13? Yes, twice; 2004 as an at-large and 2005 by winning the SEC Tournament. And once 12 wins in the 30-game era did the trick, in 2006, but that can’t be counted on at all. If Mississippi State gets swept at Missouri this weekend, well, there will have to be some real headway made in Hoover.
So realistically, the Bulldogs need take this series for a 14-16 finish and almost-sure slot. Oh, and the weather looks just fine for each series day which is no small thing as no, there can’t be a Sunday (starting) game. The Diamond Dog likely will welcome a dry spell after recent soakings.
Then again, they’ve danced around the raindrops with some real success of late, so…
…so go win two, even better three, and remove any in/out concerns. Then we can start sweating the site assignment which leads up to the committee’s make-up.
Not that I’m accusing Scooter of wearing any though years in the Gainesville sun are showing. If Mississippi State can’t have someone in the NCAA club Scott is nearly as good and, since he can actually talk about the Bulldogs and not leave the room, maybe better?
As to any lingering bitterness over his departure, remember it was Scott who put together the final plans for the baseball palace on the nor’west corner of campus. I’ll vouch for much earlier and his work as student p.r. director for the 1989 SEC Champions. Oh, and the time in Baton Rouge myself and staff left him holding the check at the tex-mex restaurant with an angry chef following Scott out the door…
It’s not a little ironic that Gator rival Florida State is repped on the committee too, and with an athletic director of some Mississippi State provenance. Alford was on the Diamond Dog roster in fact around the same time as Scott was keeping stats and stuff. As I’m out of town and don’t have my old Dawgs’ Bites for reference as to how much he played, he is not listed as a letterman. Instead he would transfer to UAB and finish up there before starting his way up the administrative ladder.
His name was batted around during the AD search that brought Zac Selmon to Starkville. Speculation on how that may impact any perceptions of Bulldog baseball is purely that. But it does seem worth wondering if Alford would mind having the current Diamond Dogs sited in Tallahassee for a regional, again?
Wait, there’s more. Bay St. Louis native Artigues played at Pearl River CC and Belhaven three decades ago, and coached at Pearl River later on. So he has shared a state with State before going on to coach Lions baseball for eight seasons and play many a game against Bulldog teams.
Then we have the pair of Southern Miss connections, since ECU athletic director Jon Gilbert held that job in Hattiesburg a couple years before heading to the Carolinas. McClain now has that USM post, and if one judged by Eagle fans’ notions they aren’t sure Gilbert has any fond feelings for his former employer.
But both had their share of competitions with Bulldog sports in general and baseball in particular. Gilbert had the agony of watching Diamond Dog ecstasy in June of 2017 just five months into the job after all. Besides, he was an assistant AD at Tennessee for six years before that so he saw a few Bulldog teams in action.
He also did his job well last June getting ECU the host site that quite a few of us Bulldog folk thought should have gone to Mississippi State, or failing that Indiana State.
McClain should be generous seeing how Mississippi State came to his campus in February.
As for the rest of the committee, it’d be worth knowing how they ended up with baseball in the first place. Dolson has a hoops background for one thing, not that there’s anything wrong with that. The others, gasp!, have degrees in p.r., journalism, even media relations for heaven’s sake! So THEY are automatically suspect…typed by someone who has been there/done all that himself and with tongue firmly in cheek.
Still it brings to mind an old comment by one Ronald G. Polk about how basketball would never allow non-hoops folk on their selection committee. And to be fair baseball membership can be a grab bag of sorts since it’s such a regional sport. Still we felt a lot more comfortable when Larry Templeton and John Cohen were in the committee room, while the folk up in Oxford were a lot less so.
And you never heard them say one phrase I hope to heck is not heard come Tournament field reveal, that being the dreaded ‘grow the game’ notion meaning somebody not really deserving is gonna host instead of someone vested and invested. That’s a rant for later.
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