Selection committee chair Jay Artigues admits mid-majors face 'serious compression' in new era of college baseball

The Field of 64 is set and the NCAA Baseball Tournament is finally ready to begin. That, of course, doesn’t mean it’s come without any controversy. In particular, this year the selection committee chair Jay Artigues faced questions about the mid-majors sitting on the bubble this year.

The Last Four teams in all came from Power Four conferences to the NCAA Tournament. The First Four Out, meanwhile, features three different mid-majors. Among those mid-majors on the outside looking in were the UConn Huskies, Troy Trojans, and Southeastern Louisiana Lions. That’s notable because Artigues himself is the athletic director at Southeastern Louisiana. Still, when he appeared on the selection show to explain those bubble decisions, it was UConn who he used as his example.

“That’s a great question and when we get to that point in it, there’s a lot of vetting,” Jay Artigues said. “There’s a lot of teams. It’s not necessarily Team A against Team B. Sometimes it’s Team A against Team D and E. If you look at UConn, obviously, they had a great season. They started out 13-7 and then they won 25 of their next 29 games, but one thing you have to take into consideration, only seven of those games were against Top 100 RPI teams. In those seven games, they were 3-4. So, when you really break it down, it makes it challenging.”

UConn finished the season with an RPI ranking of 40, a SOS ranking of 87th, and would go 12-15 against teams in Quad 1 and Quad 2. That ended up not being enough, in large part because there weren’t enough spots to go around for a mid-major team with that kind of resume. The Power Conferences simply took up too many spots already.

“When the committee looked at the last four to five teams going into the tournament,” Artigues said. “It just didn’t feel like they were better than those teams. UConn was 3-6 against the top teams in their conference, which is Creighton and Xavier. The rest of the league didn’t have a team of 100 RPI, which made it real challenging. That’s where the new era with expanded conferences created some serious compression for mid-majors. Mid-majors are challenging. I don’t think people realize outside of the three big conferences — you’ve got the SEC, ACC, Big 12 — SEC with 13 teams, ACC with nine, Big 12 with eight. That only leaves eight at-large spots, which makes it so challenging.”

Ultimately, those Power Conferences only get one automatic bid as well. However, given their resumes and the depth of those conferences, they’re bound to get those larger numbers of teams every season, particularly as conference realignment expanded their respective sizes. That’s where the squeeze is coming from on mid-majors when the selection committee meets to discuss the Field of 64.

“That’s coming from a mid-major guy. You see us [SE Louisiana] on the bubble as well. It makes it very challenging,” Artigues said. “And it really makes for some serious conversations toward the end.”