BB: SCAC: Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference

[captbunch]

live stats are working.

Rhodes trails 2-0 after 1.

[Pat Coleman]

Salisbury wins, 8-5.

[frank_ezelle]

Salisbury now has a pitcher at 10-0 and two others at 9-0.  I wish I had a better feel for the quality of competition that they play.  Maybe it's a tough schedule, maybe not--it's just so hard to compare the South region teams when the Gulf Coast states don't play many common opponents with the Atlantic Coast teams.

After keeping up so much with the Pool C discussion last year, I've mostly tuned it out this season.  I don't know if these extra games by Rhodes will do much one way or another for Millsaps.   Rhodes came into this game at 27-13, a .675 winning percentage overall and now they are down to 27-14 and a .659 percentage.  I know that's overall and not their South region numbers, but it seems three late season losses by Rhodes would have to hurt Millsaps, a team that won 3 of 4 from Rhodes.  I sure hope Rhodes wins the DH tomorrow against Greensboro--for their sake and for Millsaps as well.

[Ralph Turner]

The Capital AC is well respected as a baseball conference. 

[frank_ezelle]

Just wondering since Salisbury and Millsaps seem fairly even based on the two common opponents.  Millsaps went 7-1 against Rhodes and LaGrange and Salisbury went 2-0 with both games being competitive (Rhodes an 8-5 win today and LaGrange a 9-8 win on April 4th).

[frank_ezelle]

The Rhodes DH with Greensboro is scheduled to start at 1:00 Central.  If Greensboro is going to webcast the games or provide live stats, you should be agle to get connected at this link:

http://www.gborocollege.edu/athletics/sports/pridenet.htm

Rhodes also had their live stats going yesterday and I figure that they will do the same today.

[Pat Coleman]

Rhodes 12, Greensboro 9 F in G1.
G2 videocast starting around 5:30 ET.
http://www.gborocollege.edu/athletics/sports/pridenet.htm

[Ralph Turner]

G'boro 6-4, bottom of the 7th.

Rhodes ties in the top of the 8th.
Going to the bottom of the 8th, 6-6.

Bottom of the 9th.  G'boro has Dale Martin on first, steals second, goes to third on a wild pitch.
Richard Fee at the plate, hits a long one for out #3.  6-6. Extra innings.
Bottom of the 11th.
Richard Corona triples.
Donaldson is walked intentionally. Kyle Bolick, walked intentionally. Dale Martin at bat with the bases loaded and no outs.  3-0 count on Martin, ball four.  GC splits the series 7-6.

[frank_ezelle]

I'm not sure what 3-0 on this road trip would have done for Rhodes, but I know that 1-2 isn't going to do anything to improve their changes.  I commend Coach Cleanthes and whoever else was involved in making this decision to play these additional games.  At least the team knows that they exhausted all possible avenues in trying to get an at-large bid.

I want to make a general statement about baseball in the SCAC.  In my opinion, you could take the baseball teams from DePauw, Rhodes, Trinity, Southwestern, Millsaps, and Austin and no matter how you matched them up you would have a good 2 out of 3 game series.  The SCAC is a league with a lot of talent and I think the Rhodes trip this week showed it.  Rhodes was second in the East and they lost in the crossover series to the third team from the West (admittedly a very close series).  My point is that Rhodes is not the top team in the SCAC and here they were travelling 1,000 miles to play a Salisbury team that has throughly dominated their region and it was a very competitive 8-5 game.  Then Rhodes travels almost 400 miles to play Greensboro, another team with NCAA hopes, in a DH.  Given that Rhodes has used some key pitchers on Monday and had such a long trip, it was a good effort to get a win and then an extra inning loss.  Without the Monday game, Rhodes most likely wins two today.

I know you can pick and choose in situations like this, but I think the Rhodes trip does make a good case of how the teams from the SCAC measure up against some of the teams from other areas.  Last year both Millsaps and Rhodes split with the Emory team that made it to the finals of the D3 World Series.  I still believe that given a chance, both Rhodes and Millsaps had a decent shot at getting to the World Series, but that's water under the bridge.  The bottom line, as has been said over and over, getting an at-large bid is purely a numbers game and some areas of the country have a harder time making those numbers.  That's the unfortuanate hand dealt to the SCAC teams.

[infielddad]

Frank,
When you consider the SCAC schools are about 1,500 to 2,700 students and, for Millsaps, Southwestern, Trinity, Rhodes,etc  in DI rich/DII rich, NAIA rich scholarship areas, these schools and coaches do an amazing job of identifying, attracting, and developing talent.
The same is true of the top ASC schools.
When one considers the huge, enormous talent pool of players in California, as contrasted with the number of DI/DII and NAIA's with scholarships, programs like Chapman have a much larger pool of talent that drops through to them.
In my view, the issue the better SCAC programs and ASC programs encounter, because of the smaller group of available players and small enrollments, is depth of talent.
Millsaps, Rhodes and Trinity, and probably others, have players who can succeed at the DI level.  They also have players with one or two skills that are on par with DI.
What they don't have is the depth that you  are going to get with schools in New England, Wisconsin, etc where enrollments are 10,000 and above and DI's are few and far between.  They also just do not have the huge talent pool that exists in just the greater LA and San Diego areas that can feed Chapman even after the DI's/DII's etc take from that group.
I don't think the SCAC owes anyone any apologies.  Just my view, but you could take Coach Page, Coach Cleanthes, Coach Scannell, and some others and they would make other programs far better than they are now.  Those guys can beat you with theirs and take yours and beat you with them.
They just have a hard time admitting enough of "them."  Of course, it is still about academics and graduation and finding a job....and there aren't many doing a better job than the SCAC schools.

[Ralph Turner]

Great post, dad!  +1! 

[frank_ezelle]

Millsaps and Christopher Newport are both idle since the last rankings.  In today's ranking Millsaps goes from #5 to unranked and Christopher Newport goes from unranked to #5.  Methodist goes from unranked to #6 after winning two games from Piedmont.  The only other change is that Piedmont and Lynchburg switched at the 2 and 3 spots.

It's a shame that a Millsaps team that ended the season playing its best baseball of the year is not going on. 

[Ralph Turner]

It's a shame that a Millsaps team that ended the season playing its best baseball of the year is not going on. 

Will the permanent configuration for the SCAC-West be TU, SU, AC, HC and Millsaps?

If so, I would like for Millsaps to consider moving into the West Region.

Now that may be the "frying pan to the fire" thing, Salisbury for Chapman and USASouth for the NWC, but if Piedmont and the GSAC teams go into the USASouth, that conference just got tougher.

I see the advantage of Millsaps moving to the West Region is that all of the Texas schools become in-region games.  Millsaps would still be administrative region #3 and keep all of those eligible teams, but the chance to play UT-Tyler, UT-Dallas, and all of the ASC-West as in-region games might help with their OWP/OOWP.

[frank_ezelle]

Just wondering since Salisbury and Millsaps seem fairly even based on the two common opponents.  Millsaps went 7-1 against Rhodes and LaGrange and Salisbury went 2-0 with both games being competitive (Rhodes an 8-5 win today and LaGrange a 9-8 win on April 4th).

From a practical standpoint, Millsaps moving to the West would be worse because it would mean even more distance between Millsaps and their regional opponents. 

The problem I have with the regional rankings is that the South region rankings are dominated by teams that might as well be on the moon when it comes to Millsaps facing them in head-to-head competition.  It just isn't very practical from a money and time standpoint for Millsaps or most D3 schools to schedule teams that are over 400 miles away so an area like the South is really multiple sub-regions and it seems to me that these sub-regions vary in strength.

Since I haven't seen all of these teams play, this is obviously just a theory.  I base my theory on the knowledge that Salisbury totally dominated their region and yet using the limited available common opponents information (see quote above), they don't sound like they are any stronger than Millsaps. 

I also know that Emory in 2007 was 43-10 and they finished second in the College World Series.  And yet, when you look at how they did against teams from the Millsaps area of the South region, they split with Millsaps, they split with Rhodes, they went 0-2 against Huntingdon, and they squeaked by a weak MS College team 7-6.  That's a 3-4 record and for what it is worth, in 2007 Millsaps beat Huntingdon in 2007 by scores of 21-2 and 16-4.  It just makes me wonder if we are comparing apples to oranges when we look at the records that teams are able to compile in various area of the South Region.

Let me be clear that I'm not saying Millsaps is better than the teams that are regionally ranked--I believe Millsaps and Rhodes are at least equal to those teams, but I can't claim that they are better.  What I think is happening in the South region is what I see happening in the local tennis league every year:

Lets say that teams like Millsaps, Rhodes, Salisbury, Emory, Lynchburg, Piedmont, Methodis, etc., are all the equivalent of good 4.0 tennis players.  My belief is that the area around Millsaps is like a 4.0 tennis league while there are weaker areas of the South that would be more like a 3.5 tennis league.  A good 4.0 tennis player playing in a 3.5 league is going to have a great record, certainly better than the 4.0 player in a 4.0 league.  That's how I see the South region at the moment with the rankings dominated by the good teams in the weak area and the good teams in the stronger area are going to find it difficult to rise to the top of the rankings because they are playing stronger competition from week to week.

That's just one person's opinion and I don't have a solution.  I guess the only real solution is to win the SCAC AQ if you want to get into the NCAA Tournament.

[Ralph Turner]

Frank, Millsaps would still be able to count every school in the states of VA, NC, SC, GA, FL, AL, MS, LA, AR, TN, KY, IN, MI OH and WV as in-region.

I think that the question would be, do you want to be considered by the committee as South Region (Capital AC, USASouth AC, ODAC and some SCAC teams plus Emory and the GSAC schools) or West Region schools (ASC, SCAC-West, SCIAC, NWC, plus Chapman, CSU-East Bay, UDallas and Menlo).

As I mentioned, the advantage to being in the West Region is that UT-Tyler, LeTU, ETBU and UT-Dallas become in-region as well as the West.

In 2007, Emory got to the tourney as a Pool B.  That was luck of that draw.  Salisbury gets to take advantage of the in-region advantages that I am trying to give to Millsaps.  Salisbury is South Evaluation Region, but Administrative Region #1 (MD, DC, DE, NJ, CT, RI, MA, VT, NH and ME).  All of those games versus those teams are in-region for Salisbury.  Salisbury also picks up those 200-mile radius schools, that Millsaps doesn't have.

Your Tennis analogy is good.  I personally think that the addition of the ASC and the NWC in the last 10 years have made the West a tougher region than the South.