NCAA Baseball Tournament Bubble Watch (Thursday, May 23)
By: trey-mccurry May 23, 2019

As Clemson prepares to take the field against Louisville today, The Clemson Insider releases our initial bubble watch for the 2019 NCAA Baseball Tournament.

 

For a quick review, the field is made up of 64 teams split into 16 regional sites. The 64 teams consist of 31 automatic bids and 33 at-large selections.

We will break the bracket down into hosts, one-bid leagues, likely one-bid leagues, safely in, and then the bubble. Check back each day as we update the bubble as conference tournament progress. 

Hosts (16 teams)
Arkansas East Carolina Georgia Georgia Tech
Louisville Miami (FL) Mississippi State NC State
Oklahoma State Oregon State Stanford Texas A&M
Texas Tech UCLA UC Santa Barbara Vanderbilt

 

One-Bid Leagues (16 teams)
America East Big South Colonial Horizon
Harvard MAAC MAC Florida A&M
Northeast Ohio Valley Army SoCon
Southland Summit Southern WAC
Teams in BOLD have won the automatic bid.

 

Likely One-Bid Leagues (6 teams)
Atlantic 10 VCU Atlantic Sun Liberty
Big East Creighton Mountain West Fresno State
Sun Belt Texas State West Coast BYU
If any of these teams do not win the conference tournament, then they would at least
move to the bubble. Creighton is a lock to make the tournament, while BYU and
Fresno State would be very strong at-large candidates as well.

 

Safely In The Field (17 teams)
Arizona State Auburn Baylor California
Connecticut Dallas Baptist Florida Atlantic Illinois
Illinois State Indiana Indiana State LSU
Nebraska North Carolina Ole Miss Tennessee
West Virginia

 

Bubble IN (9 spots)
Spot Team Record Conf RPI SOS Road Q1 Q2
56 Duke 31-24 16-15 41 20 10-9 9-14 6-6
57 Houston 32-24 12-14 43 33 12-8 8-11 8-5
58 Florida 33-24 13-18 28 3 6-12 13-20 8-1
59 Florida State 35-21 17-14 55 59 7-10 8-11 6-7
60 UC Irvine 35-16 15-6 49 138 14-11 0-5 7-6
61 Clemson 33-24 15-16 42 31 10-11 7-10 12-8
62 UCF 35-21 12-14 44 49 11-8 7-9 9-6
63 Missouri 34-22-1 13-17-1 30 26 11-12-1 10-17-1 4-0
64 Michigan 38-17 16-8 48 139 12-11 4-10 5-2

 

Bubble OUT (8 teams)
Spot Team Record Conf RPI SOS Road Q1 Q2
65 Southern Miss 35-19 21-10 56 94 11-10 3-5 6-2
66 Virginia 32-23 14-17 45 30 9-9 8-15 6-5
67 Oklahoma 33-22 11-14 40 52 15-11 4-12 14-5
68 Wake Forest 31-25 15-16 53 41 9-15 7-11 7-7
69 Arizona 29-24 12-14 46 19 7-14 3-16 12-2
70 Boston College 31-26 14-18 54 47 15-13 8-14 7-6
71 Lousiana Tech 34-23 17-14 57 74 15-13 4-4 8-6
72 Washington 28-22 12-15 58 57 8-14 4-18 6-3

 

Bubble Notes
Compared to most years there is an extremely soft bubble which means one win or loss could shift a team multiple spots as the metrics change.
Key components that the selection committee will look at include: Conference Record, RPI, SOS (Strength of Schedule), Road Record, Quad 1 records (teams ranked 1-50), and Quad 2 records (teams ranked 51-100). All metrics are as of 8:00AM on Thursday, May 23.
Florida, Houston, and Missouri have completed their seasons.
Clemson, Florida State, and Virginia only have one remaining pool play game.
Boston College has already advanced to the ACC Semifinals while Duke (Georgia Tech – Friday) and Wake Forest (NC State – Thursday) can advance with wins.
Arizona, UC Irvine, and Washington play in conferences that do not hold tournaments so they will be completing their seasons with three-game series this weekend.
Southern Miss is in the winner’s bracket of the C-USA Tournament and most likely needs a win or two to make the field. 
Louisiana Tech, Michigan, Oklahoma, and UCF each face elimination games and all most likely need to win to keep their seasons alive.