This Super Regional is ridiculous

[MelRock]

From an email I received from ASU
"Sparky's Insights

Your 2011 defending National Champion Sun Devil Softball team is set to host a Super Regional in their quest to return to the College World Series to defend their crown.

They open play against Louisiana this Thursday night and need your support to travel the road to Oklahoma City."

It is nice that they refer to us as Louisiana and not the other names. Anyway I hope they feel the same way when they wake up Saturday morning and wondering what happened the night before.

Geaux Cajuns!!

[Cajun8]

Still doesn't explain the double penalty question, and the fact that we did beat those 4 Top 25 programs. You can't just
take 54 wins and throw them out the window. The question is, "Is this team capable of beating a Top 10 team?"
and that answer is YES, and their seed should reflect it. One bad loss ? are you kidding me? Are you saying the Top 10 seeds
had No bad losses?

[CajunEXPRESS]

From an email I received from ASU
"Sparky's Insights

Your 2011 defending National Champion Sun Devil Softball team is set to host a Super Regional in their quest to return to the College World Series to defend their crown.

They open play against Louisiana this Thursday night and need your support to travel the road to Oklahoma City."

It is nice that they refer to us as Louisiana and not the other names. Anyway I hope they feel the same way when they wake up Saturday morning and wondering what happened the night before.

Geaux Cajuns!!

Makes perfect sense to me. Who would you rather beat UL at Lafayette, or Louisiana? Same thing if they lose. It makes no sense to try to deminish your opponent in any way.

[GoneGolfin]

Brian, I will say this again as I tried last season. The schedule is part of it, but there is a built in bias beyond RPI. Its human nature and it is not measured in statistics or weighted formulas. Your points on their decisions only furthers my argument that it exist.

I do not know what point I made that you are trying to address. Of course I think there is bias in the selection process ... beyond the RPI itself. I made that point in this thread.

That said, again ... the RPI is the selection committee's touchstone.

Brian

[moorecajun]

I do not know what point I made that you are trying to address. Of course I think there is bias in the selection process ... beyond the RPI itself. I made that point in this thread.

That said, again ... the RPI is the selection committee's touchstone.

Brian

Brian, with that being said, would the only way for the Cajuns to improve their stock (seeding) be to schedule as many bigger conference out of conference games. Do they need to try to drop all of the Alcorn State's etc that is possible and replace with a Big-12, CUSA, etc type team?

I am just wondering if they may have maxed their potential seeding; I don't see them improving on their record, other than going undefeated.

So we need to figure out a way to get the committee to change their selection criteria.

[ATXCajun]

We've done that before to no avail. Before the Super-regional era we got sent to a regional at Arizona, where we eliminated the #1 national seed Arizona, and an Oklahoma team that had been to the WCWS the year before and lost nobody.

I agree. They say winning changes perception, but it hasn't changed perception much for this program. Consistently a top 25 team. Consistently deep in the post-season. Consistently defeats programs that are considered elite. Consistently overlooked. Consistently underrated. I think we could win a national championship and they still won't talk about us in the same sentence as some of the PAC12 schools. I will say one thing for the committee though. They knew damned well they better give us at least a 16 or we were gonna knock out one of their national seeds, again.

Whatever. Go on ladies. Take their damned trophy and bring it home to Lafayette, and tell them you're gonna do it. Let's see if they can stop you.

[CajunT]

I do not know what point I made that you are trying to address. Of course I think there is bias in the selection process ... beyond the RPI itself. I made that point in this thread.

That said, again ... the RPI is the selection committee's touchstone.

Brian

I agree, my point is that I made this point last year that it went beyond the scheduling of the Lotiefs. The schedule is something they can address to a certain point, depending on the funds raised to pay teams like Georgia Tech and Northwestern to come to Lafayette. The part they have no control over is the bias of the process and that will never change. This year was almost the perfect season for the Cajuns, going undefeated in their out of conference schedule and losing only four games. Despite that accomplishment along with a Top 10 Ranking and a #12 RPI, it garnered them nothing more then a #14 seed. Sadley, that is the reality of their situation.

[ATXCajun]

My data shows that the two smartest people on this board live in the Austin area. :-)

[CajunAmos]

Brian, with that being said, would the only way for the Cajuns to improve their stock (seeding) be to schedule as many bigger conference out of conference games. Do they need to try to drop all of the Alcorn State's etc that is possible and replace with a Big-12, CUSA, etc type team?

I am just wondering if they may have maxed their potential seeding; I don't see them improving on their record, other than going undefeated.

So we need to figure out a way to get the committee to change their selection criteria.

You may have missed it earlier, but we had the #1 RPI out-of-conference. We had another game scheduled against Tulsa rained out, as well as one against North Carolina, but it's tough to schedule that many top 25 teams (10+) out of conference without a lot larger travel/expense budget than we currently have. We already attend the two of the three largest pre-conference tournaments in the country. I know there are times when some of those folks don't want to play us in those tournament as well.

[CajunAmos]

No, they won't cause any kind of uproar. As the #7 team IN AMERICA a few years ago, we were sent to Arizona as the NUMBER 5 SEED in an 8 TEAM regional.

Read that again if you weren't following the program then. We weren't even seeded in the top HALF of the country, even though we were ranked in the top 10.

What happened? The NUMBER 5 REGIONAL SEED shocked AZ and everyone else. Won the whole cotton - picken thing and went to the College World Series. Uproar? Hardly. Nobody gives a crap outside of Lafayette, and that's a shame.

With all that said, I expect the Cajuns to win easily this Thursday and Friday. Maybe I'm losing my mind. But this isn't even going to be close.

Actually, to be completely correct, we didn't go to the world series that year. We came through the losers bracket and beat Oklahoma 12-4 in the first game on championship Sunday, but lost the "if-necessary" next game 15-0 when Brooke ran out of gas.