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NATIONAL COLLEGIATE ATHLETIC ASSOCIATION MEDIA CONFERENCEMay 26, 2014Dennis FarrellJ.D. HAMILTON: Everyone, thank you for joining us today on this Memorial Day, and first we want to thank everyone for serving and protecting us. At this time I just want to turn it over to the Division I baseball committee chair, Dennis Farrell, Commissioner of the Big West Conference, to give us an opening statement and then we'll take questions from the media on the call. Dennis? DENNIS FARRELL: Thank you, J.D. The NCAA DivisionI baseball committee has been deliberating since Saturday morning to put together the field that was just unveiled. It was a challenge this year, recognizing the fact that there is a lot of parity in college baseball today. But the committee members came into the meeting well‑prepared. We had reports from all of the regional advisory committees, and the process ran extraordinarily smoothly from my perspective. This is my fourth year on the committee, and I believe that it ran as smoothly this year as it ever has, despite the fact that there was concern coming in about how much parity there is in baseball today. I guess with that, we'll open it up for questions. Q. Just a quick question on the Gainesville regional versus the Coral Gables regional. I was a little curious how you guys put those two regionals together. By my numbers here, I had the 4 seed in Gainesville with a 53 RPI in College of Charleston and the 4 seed in Coral Gables with a 202, a 149‑point difference in the 4 seeds there. What was the thinking of giving Florida a significantly tougher 4 seed than Miami, and also overall the type of regional? DENNIS FARRELL: Well, all of the brackets are put together with the principle of trying to limit the amount of travel that occurs for the three teams that have to go there, so both of those regionals you have the fourth seed that is a driving team to both Gainesville and Coral Gables, while the No.2 and 3 seeds in both of those regionals are flying. Now, that being said, we also try to balance the competitiveness of each of those regionals as much as possible, so we look at the combined RPIs of the three teams that are seeded 1, 2 and 3, and in this case the Coral Gables bracket has a combined RPI of 67, while the Gainesville one has a combined RPI of 72. Now, again, that's for the 1, 2 and 3 seeds, not the 4 seeds. Q. I guess as a follow‑up, looking at kind of the bubble teams, when you look at the last four in and the last four out, can you give some examples of what kind of set teams that were in apart from the teams that were out from your perspective, and also, USC being in the first four out was a little surprising. DENNIS FARRELL: Well, obviously USC earned their way back into the conversation by taking two out of three over the weekend from Oregon State. Prior to that they were on the outer edge of the fringe on that conversation. What we try to do is look at a number of different criteria, be it Head to Head competition or common opponents, could also be how teams finished. I'll take the example of UC Irvine and USC which are two teams that I'm familiar with. What separated those two teams in my mind was the fact that UC Irvine went 2‑0 against USC head‑to‑head. UC Irvine finished third in the fifth ranked conference, USC tied for fifth in the fourth ranked conference. I think that the determining factor was probably the head‑to‑head, though. Q. Quick question about the regional hosts: I'm assuming Louisville was the last regional host. Curious what teams were in that conversation. I imagine Houston and Washington would be there, and did you consider Washington as a potential new site with a new ballpark and a third West host? DENNIS FARRELL: You know, we actually had five teams on the board for those final two seeding spots, and you pretty much hit it on the head. The five were Houston, Louisville, Oklahoma State, Texas and Washington. So I think that what concerned the committee about Washington was their non‑conference strength of schedule, ranked, I believe, 216, somewhere in that neighborhood, and so that certainly played against them. Oklahoma State playing in the Big 12 Championship certainly helped them, as well, as well as winning the regular season in the Big 12, and then Louisville had the dominance over Houston this year with a series sweep and the championship game. Q. A lot has made of UNLV. Just wondered what went into the thought process of making them a 2 seed. Were they the last 2 seed? And also the process of sending them to Corvallis. DENNIS FARRELL: Well, we don't rank the 2 seeds. We just group them as a group of 16 schools, so there's no way of saying that they were the last 2 seed. But UNLV obviously had a high RPI, had success in the West with some quality wins, as well. In terms of sending them to Oregon State, again, our seeding parameters is to try and limit the amount of travel as much as possible, and so as the committee sat down and put together that Corvallis regional, it just seemed to fit that UNLV would go there. Arizona State was going to Cal Poly at that point, as well. Q. There are only two regions in the West, and there was a lot of talk Seattle would get one. What happened with Seattle and why are there only two? DENNIS FARRELL: Well, I think I answered that a second ago, but I think that there were five schools that were in consideration for those final two host sites, and I think that what played against Washington was their non‑conference strength of schedule was about 216, and so as we compared those five schools' résumés against each other, I think that that was the one thing that probably played against Washington getting a host site. Q. Just out of curiosity, when you look at LSU's strong finish this week, obviously why they probably got into the top eight, but you've got to get a nice breakdown of the five teams you had in the mix for the last host spot. Can you give me a breakdown of what the committee's thinking was and which teams were in the mix for that final national seed perhaps? DENNIS FARRELL: Again, we had five teams that were under consideration for the final three national seeds. The three that got them, TCU, LSU and Louisiana Lafayette, and then also Rice and Vanderbilt were under consideration, and I think that it's fair to say that LSU and TCU's finish in their respective conference tournaments yesterday probably was what put them over the top to earn that national seed. Q. Was Illinois heavily in the discussion for an at‑large bid? I was curious how close Illinois was. DENNIS FARRELL: They were in the final 11 teams that were on the board for the at‑large positions. Q. You alluded to the regional advisory committees earlier, and I was wondering if you could maybe shed a little light on the role that those committees play as kind of a subjective criterion here, complementing all the numbers that you have. DENNIS FARRELL: Yeah, and I've used this saying quite often the last two years, that in my mind the whole selection process is a marriage of art and science, and obviously the science is the data that we receive tons of, whether it be RPI information or results against top 25, 50, 100, bottom 150, that type of information that we have plenty of access to. The art part of it in my mind is what the coaches that serve on the eight regional advisory committees see. These are the guys that go out and play the games. They know the players. They know the teams' strengths and weaknesses, and they provide some very valuable insight into each of the regions that the committee takes under advisement, and we ask them in each of the regions to rank the teams from their respective regions. Some regions are larger than others and have more teams that are actually ranked. The biggest one obviously is the West with five conferences, so you have five coaches on there. You can have as many as 15 to 20 teams that could be considered in that region. And then you have other regions where there may be as few as three conferences, and maybe all three of those conferences might be AQ only conferences. But their input, at least in my mind, has always been very valuable. Q. It looked like you guys made an effort to avoid some of the same pairings we've had in the last few years, Clemson, South Carolina, comes to mind, but I notice Florida and Miami once again paired in the super regional. That's been a pretty common pairing through the years. Did you consider trying to avoid that or was it kind of a necessity because of geography? DENNIS FARRELL: Yeah, we have safety net considerations that take into account whether schools have been paired with each other in the last two years, and those two that you speak of were not paired over the last two years. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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