UPDATED Big 12 Projections In NCAA Baseball Tournament

About a month ago, we projected where teams from the Big 12 would land should the NCAA Tournament have begun on April 10. With just one weekend of the regular season remaining – plus conference championships – how have those projections changed?

The order of the Big 12 has come a long way. The West Virginia Mountaineers now control the conference and appear to be in good standing to finish the regular season that way. In a competitive Big 12, that auto-bid (which comes at the end of the Big 12 Tournament, not the regular season) comes at a higher premium.

For the sake of this exercise, I referenced RPI+ rankings by College Baseball Nation.

Let's take a look where things stand today.

Who Makes The Cut?

64 teams make the NCAA baseball tournament, 31 of which are conference tournament champions on an auto-bid. The other 33 spots are up for grabs.

Once the field of 64 is determined, teams are broken up into 16 four-team pods, known as the "Regionals." They play a double-elimination, round-robin style tournament and the victor from each region goes on to play other victors of their own regional. This round is a best-of-three series known as the "Super Regionals." From there, eight teams advance to the College World Series in Omaha.

The 16 regional hosts are chosen by an NCAA selection committee and are not necessarily just the top 16 conference champions.

Last year, five Big 12 teams made the regionals,

and two – Oklahoma and Texas – made it all the way to Omaha. The Sooners eventually would lose in the finals to Ole Miss.

These teams would likely make the cut should the seeding be chosen today:

West Virginia (auto, Regional Host)
Oklahoma State
Texas
Kansas State
TCU
Texas Tech (last four in)

NCAA Tournament: Week 13 Regional Hosts

To understand where and how our Big 12 teams will be seeded, we have to take a look at which 16 teams would be hosting a regional. After Week 13, the top 16 teams in College Baseball Nation's rankings are:

Wake Forest (Winston-Salem)
Arkansas (Fayetteville)
Florida (Gainesville)
Stanford (Stanford)
LSU (Baton Rouge)
Coastal Carolina (Myrtle Beach)
West Virginia (Morgantown)
Campbell (Buies Creek)
Dallas Baptist (Dallas)
Miami (Coral Gables)
Vanderbilt (Nashville)
South Carolina (Columbia)
UConn (East Hartford)
Clemson (Clemson)
Oregon State (Corvallis)
Tennessee (Knoxville)

(Names of regionals)

Given the variety in both location and conference, this top 16 wouldn't need a lot of tinkering by the selection committee. Sometimes, fringe top-16 teams will jump others to give a more balanced representation of the country. Not so this year.

Big 12 Team Placement

To be as balanced as possible, the NCAA Committee roughly places the higher seeds after 16 in reverse order. So – again, roughly – No. 17 plays in the No. 16 regional, No. 18 in No. 15, and so on.

A couple other parameters: They do seed with regards to geographic proximity, as well (note that this isn't always the case, as Oregon played in the Louisville regional last year). Teams from the same conference typically won't be paired in the same regional pod.

With that logic and using College Baseball Nation's top 50, our five Big 12 representatives would be seeded as follows:

West Virginia: Regional host
Oklahoma State: No. 2 seed in Coral Gables Regional
Texas: No. 2 seed in Baton Rouge Regional
Kansas State: No. 3 seed in Dallas Regional
TCU: No. 3 seed in Knoxville Regional
Texas Tech: No. 3 seed in Corvallis Regional

Of course, conference tournaments in the postseason change landscapes dramatically. Check in to see who makes the cut with the NCAA Tournament selection show on Monday, May 29 at 11:00 a.m. CT.

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