I’ve experienced a lot crazy endings over the Corbs’ years to the SEC regular season (before that I didn’t even pay attention to SEC baseball) but none can compare to this year.
With just 3 games to go we have the following teams still in pursuit of the following finish to the season;:
1st place — Texas, Arkansas, LSU
2nd place — Texas, Arkansas, LSU. Vandy, Georgia, Auburn
3rd place — Texas, Arkansas, LSU, Vandy, Georgia, Auburn, Tennesse, Ole Miss
4th place — Texas, Arkansas, LSU, Vandy, Georgia, Auburn, Tennessee, Ole Miss, Oklahoma, Florida, Kentucky
I’ll not go any further because I’m tired of typing all those over and over. It gets even whackier the further down you go in the standings ending with the current 13th place team able to climb all the way to 7th.
Complicating matters even further, the teams able to take 1st or 2nd do not play each other this weekend as they’ve already done that.
This means that every single series this weekend is super important. And yes, that even includes Miss State at Missouri as the Tigers could climb all the way to 15th place with a series win after having 0 wins a week ago, thus scrambling the pairings for day 1 in Hoover. But, SC and MO are locked into 15th place so their day 1 Hoover opponents will be the 9th and 10th place teams so everybody will want those prime spots; it’ll be the consolation prize for not making it to 8th and a first day bye.
As per usual, we’ll be focusing on each series result that favors Vanderbilt since that’s the only team most of us care about, all the others can go to hell for all I care. Especially UTjr.
The top 8 seeds are all that’s really important with respect to Hoover as they get a 1st round bye with the top 4 getting 2 byes.
Texas is in the driver’s seat as they currently lead by 2 games over Arkansas, 3 over LSU, and 4 over VU-AU-GA.
One win over OK this weekend and they lock up at least a tie for 1st. Two wins and they are outright champs.
The worst they can finish is tied for 2nd, which would end up 2nd if they tie only LSU due to tiebreakers (more on tiebreakers later as they can and likely will get crazy once it’s all over.)
It’s not very likely but they could finish 3rd should they tie with AR and LSU where they lose the tie-breaker. More on that later, as well.
There are also crucial national implications for how the SEC ends up as, currently, as many as (sorry for all the ases) 11 SEC teams are in position to host a regional (it won’t be that many, but they ARE in contention) and 6 SEC teams are in contention to be a Top 8 National Seed, a prized position if ever there was one as it’s a 70-75% likelihood of getting to Omaha as a NS
.
But that’s for later.
First, let’s go through this weekends’ SEC series.
With just 3 games to go we have the following teams still in pursuit of the following finish to the season;:
1st place — Texas, Arkansas, LSU
2nd place — Texas, Arkansas, LSU. Vandy, Georgia, Auburn
3rd place — Texas, Arkansas, LSU, Vandy, Georgia, Auburn, Tennesse, Ole Miss
4th place — Texas, Arkansas, LSU, Vandy, Georgia, Auburn, Tennessee, Ole Miss, Oklahoma, Florida, Kentucky
I’ll not go any further because I’m tired of typing all those over and over. It gets even whackier the further down you go in the standings ending with the current 13th place team able to climb all the way to 7th.
Complicating matters even further, the teams able to take 1st or 2nd do not play each other this weekend as they’ve already done that.
This means that every single series this weekend is super important. And yes, that even includes Miss State at Missouri as the Tigers could climb all the way to 15th place with a series win after having 0 wins a week ago, thus scrambling the pairings for day 1 in Hoover. But, SC and MO are locked into 15th place so their day 1 Hoover opponents will be the 9th and 10th place teams so everybody will want those prime spots; it’ll be the consolation prize for not making it to 8th and a first day bye.
As per usual, we’ll be focusing on each series result that favors Vanderbilt since that’s the only team most of us care about, all the others can go to hell for all I care. Especially UTjr.
The top 8 seeds are all that’s really important with respect to Hoover as they get a 1st round bye with the top 4 getting 2 byes.
Texas is in the driver’s seat as they currently lead by 2 games over Arkansas, 3 over LSU, and 4 over VU-AU-GA.
One win over OK this weekend and they lock up at least a tie for 1st. Two wins and they are outright champs.
The worst they can finish is tied for 2nd, which would end up 2nd if they tie only LSU due to tiebreakers (more on tiebreakers later as they can and likely will get crazy once it’s all over.)
It’s not very likely but they could finish 3rd should they tie with AR and LSU where they lose the tie-breaker. More on that later, as well.
There are also crucial national implications for how the SEC ends up as, currently, as many as (sorry for all the ases) 11 SEC teams are in position to host a regional (it won’t be that many, but they ARE in contention) and 6 SEC teams are in contention to be a Top 8 National Seed, a prized position if ever there was one as it’s a 70-75% likelihood of getting to Omaha as a NS
.
But that’s for later.
First, let’s go through this weekends’ SEC series.
