The college baseball season is in its final weeks. Teams are looking to grab extra wins to qualify for their conference tournaments and potentially secure a spot in the 64-team national tournament.
For head coach Butch Thompson and his no. 10 Auburn Tigers, their hopes go a little farther than just making the national tournament, they want to host the supers.
Auburn’s Next Steps to Host NCAA Super Regionals
The NCAA Baseball tournament is not like other NCAA tournaments, where other sports allocate their teams into four 16-team regionals, baseball uses 16 four-team regionals, with the top 16 national seeds becoming hosts of the regionals.
The winner of the double-elimination regional round moves on to the best-of-3 super regionals, which are hosted by the top 8 seeds should they win their regional.
On D1Baseball’s “Sunday Waypoints” video series on YouTube, X user Aubie asked host Joe Healy, “How many wins does Auburn need to be in the top 8?”
Healy mentioned that there are a lot of factors that could go into the final decision of seeds.
“I will first say, we don’t exactly know,” he said. “But I would generally say, if their RPI is in that top-5 range and they get 18 SEC wins, that probably ought to do it, but it depends on what everyone else does.”
Like most elite teams in the country, the Tigers want the chance to host both its own regional, and a super regional, which would give them immense home-field advantage. Sitting seventh in the conference standings, Auburn has a 21-6 record at home and 9-3 in home SEC games, and are fourth in the RPI rankings.
This podcast episode was filmed and streamed before Auburn’s series-clinching, weather-shortened, 8-1 win against number 12 Tennessee, giving them 13 SEC wins on the season.
Thompson’s squad won on light hitting and pitcher mistakes; three RBI singles, two bases-loaded walks and a wild pitch helped put the Tigers out of reach. Starting pitcher Christian Chatterton and relief pitcher Cade Fisher combined to give up only four hits and one solo home run while striking out seven batters.
The Tigers have seven games left on their schedule, six of them against SEC opponents. They will play unranked South Carolina and then travel to Oxford to face number 23 Ole Miss. In between, they will play a non-conference tilt against Jacksonville State.
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To get to 18 wins and, in all likelihood, remain in the RPI top-5, Auburn will have to take five of those next six SEC games.
“I’ll bottom-line it this way,” Healy said as he finished his answer. “The RPI is fine and is probably going to be fine, you just got to continue to win some games.”
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