It's Too Soon to Talk about RPI. So Let's Talk About It!
RPI right now of course is highly volatile and not worth much but at the same time we are currently 14 in RPI so we are trending well for when it does matter. That said, let's talk about what we need to do to host.
The consensus I think in terms of opinion which I agree with is we need to go 17-13 with wins over USM in Starkville and the Governor's Cup to host. Pretty simple! I think 18+ gets us a chance at a National Seed at least in the discussion.
The good news regarding our resume so far is we do not have a bad loss on it unless UCLA or USM fade. And UCLA does play in the Big 10 right now meaning they could be a "that's baseball" weekend against Northwestern away from plummeting.
Although, I won't lie I thought for a minute there that Tulane might give us a bad loss- but thanks to Ace Reese and friends we were able to pull it through!
The thing that make this hairy is you never know what the committee is going to do. Are they going to make it harder on the SEC to host this year because of the very highly publicized midweek losses by teams like LSU and Florida? Yes, they very well could. It also could be neither here nor there. So, that's why I think 17 wins is a good safe guess for us.
As far as this upcoming weekend goes, Arkansas's RPI is in the high 90's thanks to two losses to Stetson and a loss to Texas-Arlington with a loss to Arkansas State also not helping their cause although on the surface that may actually end up not being that bad of a loss. We'll see. So, we could very well go 2-1 this weekend and our RPI could drop at least in the short term. Of course, things will likely level out in the end and Fayetteville is a very difficult place to play. That said, we really need to start winning some road games to put on our resume' so this is a very important series to open with.
