Mercer sweats out days of conference tournaments with hopes of NCAA at-large bid (Analysis)
By Michael A. Lough
The Sports Report
centralgasports@gmail.com
The long weekend for the Mercer baseball team continues.
The Bears stormed into the Southern Conference tournament having won the regular-season title, and with a consensus top-30 RPI and a record number of wins and home wins.
They headed home Friday afternoon after a fairly stunning 1-2 visit to Greenville, The Citadel staggering the Bears with 9-2 and 14-4 wins, a 9-8 win over Wofford in the middle.
The good news was that the impact on its nifty RPI was minimal, dropping only a few spots. But with three days â the loss was in a 9 a.m. first pitch Friday â of conference baseball to go, that wasnât likely to stay quite so good.
The Bears started the tournament with an impressive No. 26 RPI, and left the tournament having dropped only a spot or two. But that was around noon on Friday, with hundreds of relevant games to follow.
Mercer has plenty of good on its resume: 44-15 record, 29-2 at home, a win over top-5 Georgia Tech late in the season. And the Southern Conference RPI is strong, ahead of Conference USA and Southland, among others, and far ahead of similar mid-major conference Coastal Athletic, Atlantic Sun and Big South.
In 2015, the Bears got an at-large bid with an RPI of 42.
But there are flaws as well.
While The Citadel launched itself into the top 40 after the second win and then the SoCon championship on Saturday after sitting at 151 following the second Mercer win, being run-ruled in the elimination game and being outscored 23-6 by the Bulldogs â and 31-15 in three tournament games - hurts.
Mercer had only five games against Quad 1 teams, until The Citadel became a Quad 1 team after beating Mercer twice. The seven Quad-1 games â as of the end of Saturdayâs action - are the fifth-fewest among the top 50 RPI teams.
The average RPI of teams Mercer beat is 162, sixth-worst of the top 50.
Part of the strength of schedule issue is that Mercer played 28 games â fully half of its regular-season schedule- against Quad-4 teams, tied with Kent State for second-most among the top 100 teams in Warren Nolan. A sweep by non-NCAA candidate Western Carolina, a respectable top-70 team, doesnât help.
Nor does the fact that 61.4 percent of Mercerâs wins came against Quad-4 teams.
Mercerâs strength of schedule improved from 120 to 117, still the fourth-worst among the top 50.
CUSA has three teams in the top 30 in RPI, the Sun Belt five. The Southern Conferenceâs third team is No. 65 Western Carolina.
From D1Baseball Saturday morning: âOur only change this morning is that Mercer is out of the field as the first team out, and Pittsburgh is in the field. Pitt continues to play well in the ACC tournament and has several high-end wins this season. Meanwhile, Mercer has a Top 30 RPI to its advantage, but otherwise, there is very little meat on the bone outside of a midweek win over Georgia Tech and a series win over Troy to begin the season.
âMercer played the No. 219 non-conference SOS, which is typically very problematic for a mid-major trying to be in the field as an at-large team. The saving grace for Mercer is that according to our Mark Etheridge, no mid-major at-large with an RPI of better than 34 has been left out of the field on Selection Monday. Mercer is going to test that streak.â
Recent postseason history doesnât help the otherwise solid reputation. Entering this yearâs event, Mercer is 4-6 in its last 10 SoCon tournament games, getting outscored 93-75.
The Bears are still 4-6 in their last 10, outscored 107-82.
Mercer is hoping for its fifth NCAA Tournament bid under head coach Craig Gibson, two while in the Atlantic Sun (2010 and 2013) and two in the Southern (2015, 2019).
The NCAA will announce the field at noon Monday.