And The Valley Projects: April 8th

Due to life, school, and the series with Vanderbilt beginning yesterday, I'm just now writing the projections at 11 AM on a Friday. We won't delve into as much detail as I'd like to, and I promise next week we're jumping back to our regularly scheduled #content.

The National Seeds

Florida, Miami (FL), South Carolina, Vanderbilt, Florida State, Cal, South Carolina, Texas A&M, UNC

For the most part, the national seed pack is starting to form. There may be some change at the bottom of the pack and if Vanderbilt plays the next two game of their series with LSU like they did Thursday night they may fall out, but I think we have our core group of A students established for now. There are 5-6 absolutely exceptional teams in college baseball right now that have proven to be heads and shoulders above the rest. The most notable action of the first pack is that Florida swept Texas A&M at home over the weekend during BASEBALLMANIA II. Of course, the Aggies don't experience such a drastic drop because losing to Florida this year does not carry a lot of weight.

The Hosts

Michigan, Oregon State, Louisville, UC Santa Barbara/LSU, TCU, Clemson, Tech, Rice

Not a lot of change when it comes to the back half of the other 16. Michigan overtakes Michigan State for the Big Ten as well as hosting rights, Texas Tech supplants Long Beach State (who exits the field completely after an abysmal week) and we have an interesting case involving LSU.

In a vacuum, LSU does not deserve to host a regional based on their own merit at this point in time. However, UC Santa Barbara does. The issue is that UCSB's stadium only seats 1,000 and kind of doesn't have lights, which is a big issue when you're trying to fit three, potentially four games in one day. This was a potential issue last year and one solution offered was to host it in a minor league park some miles away. That makes sense logistically if they can secure the park, but here at ATVS we like to spice things up a bit, and in the past the NCAA has had two seeds with the proper facilities host the one seed (Arkansas did last year with Missouri State). LSU has a world class facility and is one of the stronger one seeds, so I went ahead and drew up the Gauchos coming to Baton Rouge

The Rest Of The Field

Even though it's technically Santa Barbara's regional, it's being hosted in Baton Rouge which means due to geography some familiar friends are coming back to the Box, with the most familiar being Southeastern, who so far is just running away with the Southland. SWAC AQ Alabama State is the fourth seed.

As per usual, the field is littered with ACC and SEC teams, some of whom would run away with things in other power five conferences, specifically one that to an extent is ran by a certain school that is not present in the field. The Clemson-South Carolina matchup in the potential Supers was interesting but I decided to swing away from it. While the west coast as a whole is fairly represented, there's a distinct PNW flavor between Oregon State, Seattle, and Gonzaga, with Washington and Oregon sitting on the bubble.

The Group Of Death Of The Week is awarded to Ann Arbor, where Michigan from the Big Ten hosts Stanford from the PAC-12 and Notre Dame from the independent ranks ACC. If Stanford was in the B1G instead of the PAC 12, they would be taking Michigan's hosting spot or at least contending for it, so that's an interesting (potential) matchup to me. And the fact that the Wolverine's rivals/not rivals Notre Dame is there just adds to the mix. Oh and Creighton out of the Horizon isn't a team to play around with either.

That's it for the expedited projections, we do this every week at ATVS and it's usually longer. Come back and scope it out next week, so long as you