A Rundown Of Tourney Participants We’ve Talked To

Garrett Wittels-Florida International

Chad Arnold-Washington State

Bryant Cotton-St. Louis

Danny Brock-St. Louis

Jim Wren-Dartmouth

Blake Cooper-South Carolina

Max Willett-New Mexico

Justin Howard-New Mexico

B.A. Vollmuth-Southern Mississippi

Pierre LePage-UConn

Thomas Royse-Louisville (Video)

Dan McDonnell-Louisville (Video)

Dave Esquer-Cal (Video)

George Horton-Oregon (Video)

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NCAA Selection Committee Chair Tim Weiser

TCU Regional-Stephen Francis

In this podcast Collegebaseball360.com Editor Sean Stires talks to Stephen Francis of Examiner.com about TCU and the Ft. Worth Regional.  Other teams in the Regional are Baylor, Arizona and Lamar.  If TCU wins its Regional the Horned Frogs will potentially face Texas for a second straight year in Super Regional play.  Stires and Francis talk about that as well.

Read Stephen’s Ft. Worth Regional Preview-Pt. 1.

Podcast

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TCU's Lupton Stadium will host an NCAA Regional for a second straight year. (Courtesy TCU)

First Place & More On The Line This Weekend…

Collegebaseball360.com contributor Stephen Francis covers TCU for Examiner.com.  We talked with him earlier this week in our podcast to talk about the Horned Frogs and their big series this weekend in Albuquerque vs. the New Mexico Lobos.

By Stephen Francis

Of the eleven (and a third) games remaining in the regular season for the TCU baseball team, the following three may be the most important.  This weekend, the Horned Frogs travel to Albuquerque, New Mexico for the series that could clinch them the Mountain West Conference regular season title.  Of course, the task looks much easier in writing than it actually is.

With a 12-5 record in conference play, and at 30-15 overall, the New Mexico Lobos currently sit two games behind the Frogs in the Mountain West standings and are just outside the top 25 in most of college baseball’s major polls.  This team is more than capable of taking a key series.  Just ask Texas; who fell victim to the Lobos in two out of three games to start the season.

Obviously, that’s the most prestigious on on New Mexico’s resume and with the Longhorns’ current 21-game winning streak going on, that’s all they really need.  This team is good enough for an at-large bid to the NCAA baseball tournament, and they’re even good enough to pull an upset on the Horned Frogs.  That means taking the series is all-the-more important for TCU.

CLICK HERE to read more…

TCU, New Mexico & Texas Top The Talk

Record New Mexico crowds are expected this weekend at Isotopes Park to see the Lobos face TCU (New Mexico photo).

West Conference.  The Horned Frogs are still in the running to snag one of the top eight national seeds when NCAA bids come out in less than a month, while New Mexico is looking for some big wins to try to earn its first NCAA berth in nearly 50 years.

The Lobos lead the Mountain West with a .356 batting average and 395 runs scored, while the Horned Frogs have the top pitching staff in the conference with a 3.76 staff ERA and 348 strikeouts (stats as of May 2).

In this podcast Sean Stires talks with CB360 contributor Stephen Francis about this weekend’s match-up as well as Big 12 teams like Texas, Texas Tech and Oklahoma as well as UT Arlington All-American Michael Choice.

LISTEN

Stephen Francis covers TCU baseball (and other TCU sports) for TCU Horned Frogs Examiner.com, and he has been providing Collegebaseball360.com with looks at the Horned Frogs this season.  In his latest report Francis provides a “basic” look at the format of the NCAA tournament-with a bit of a TCU twist.

2010 is the last year Rosenblatt Stadium will be college baseball's ultimate destination.

re familiar with the term “pennant race.”  It’s the time of year when the 30 teams that make up baseball’s highest level of competitive play in the U. S. make their final run at a playoff berth.  It usually starts in September when rosters expand from 25 to 40 and teams typically have between 25-30 games to go before the playoffs begin.  For college baseball teams, that time is now.

The TCU Horned Frogs (and a hundred or so other teams) find themselves right in the middle of the NCAA version of a pennant race.  With roughly 20 games remaining, this is the final opportunity for TCU to make their plea as to why they deserve a shot in the college baseball postseason and why they deserve a shot at having home field advantage.

Who makes it in

Just like the NCAA basketball tournament, 64 teams will participate in baseball’s tournament.  Just like the other b-ball, teams winning their respective conference championships will receive “automatic bids” while the rest are divided up between “at large” teams.  With 32 conferences currently participating in Division I NCAA Baseball, it means half the field will receive automatic qualification while the other half have to hope their regular season record and ranking will carry them in.  However, that’s where the similarities end.

Unlike it’s counterpart, the baseball tournament consists of four rounds of “double-elimination” play.  Since wins and losses reset at the end of each round of the tournament, this means a team could lose four times throughout the competition and still win the championship.

The Frogs have made six consecutive postseason appearances and seven total in school history.  Their first postseason appearance came in 1994 when the Horned Frogs qualified for the Midwest Regional, which took place in Stillwater, Oklahoma.

Regionals

The tournament field is broken into sixteen “regions,” which each host a “Regional” round of the tournament.  Those sixteen teams are made up a combination of the eight highest-ranking teams (referred to as “national seeds”) and then eight other teams traditionally consist of teams that can promise a certain amount of fan attendance and revenue.  Each Regional is made up of four teams competing in a double-elimination tournament.  The sixteen winners of the Regionals move onto the Super Regionals.

CLICK HERE to read more…

TCU jumped out to a 10-0 lead and went on to defeat BYU, 13-6, in Thursday’s only game involving a CB360 top-50 team (the Frogs are #9 in the Composite National Rankings). CollegeBaseball360.com has welcomed a new contributor, Stephen Francis, from Examiner.com‘s Ft. Worth Edition. His series preview is posted below, under the links to tonight’s TCU-BYU opener.

• at #9 TCU 13, BYU 6  |  Final Stats
TCU Recap |  BYU Recap
coverage – Live Stats |  Live Video |  Live Audio (BYU)
TCU info. – Games Notes |  Roster |  2010 Stats |  Media Guide |  Video Intro
BYU info. – Game Notes |  Roster |  2010 Stats (top menu)  |  Season Preview |  Quick Facts

TCU-BYU SERIES PREVIEW
By Stephen Francis

FT. WORTH, Texas – The TCU baseball team kicks off their 2010 Mountain West Conference schedule Thursday night as the BYU Cougars come to town.  If the out-of-conference schedule is any indication, Frog fans are in store for a fun ride as league competition begins.

The 13-2 Horned Frogs enter the series ranked fourth in the nation by Baseball America [and 9th in the CB360 Composite National Rankings] and are a perfect 7-0 at Lupton Stadium this season. Through the first 15 games, it’s the second-best start in team history and the best since 1985’s team went  19-1 to start the year  (that team went 14-1 in their first 15). The 2010 Frogs’ only losses have come on the road at Cal State Fullerton, where they won the other two games of the series, and at a neutral site against perennial power Rice. Fullerton was ranked in most major college baseball polls at the time and Rice was (and is) currently ranked.

As if that’s not enough, the Horned Frogs have won five in a row and taken nine of their last 10 ball games. The TCU nation could not ask for a better start to the season, which has built a solid RPI ranking and given TCU an inside track at a Regional tournament berth, and even a solid possibility of qualifying as a host team for a Regional round and maybe even a Super Regional. However, that all won’t happen without a respectable conference run. Cue BYU.

The Cougars come into Thursday night’s game with a 7-9 record and unranked. Take care though not to be fooled by the losing record. They’ve shown some signs of brilliance this season, winning at Baylor on March 2 and taking two of three from UC-Davis and finding themselves on the “good” side of the scoreboard in four of the past six games. The rebuttal, though, is that they lost two of three to UT-Arlington, whom TCU defeated 15-2 last Tuesday.  READ MORE …