Our 2011 playoff predictions

Will Texas-Tyler get second life and see its name called by the selection committee? Texas-Tyler athletics photo

The easy decisions have already been made. All 38 automatic bids have been handed out, and with that, our in-house D3baseball.com committee met for nearly three hours by phone to do the difficult stuff: select the 17 at-large teams, two Pool B and 15 Pool C, and place all 55 teams into eight regionals.

The results of NCAA's official selection committee discussions should be known by about 3 a.m. Monday morning. These are our projections:

Projected Pool B Bids
Chapman
Piedmont 

Chapman was put in by general acclamation. Piedmont was the matter of significant discussion with Case Western Reserve, but had the higher strength of schedule, a better regional winning percentage, and while there was no head-to-head, the common opponents were pretty much a wash.

Pool C Bids
Shenandoah
Heidelberg
UW-Whitewater
Rowan
Brockport State
Alvernia
Amherst
St. Thomas
Eastern Connecticut
Salisbury
New Jersey
Illinois Wesleyan
Keene State
MIT
Texas-Tyler

The first five teams were put in by general acclamation, no objections discussed. The next six teams were fairly easy decisions before it became like pulling teeth. Illinois Wesleyan was fairly close in profile to New Jersey and got in, followed by Keene State, but the last two decisions were difficult. We had, among other teams, a team with no games at all against regionally ranked opponents, a very low SOS but a high winning percentage. We also had a team with a lower winning percentage and a 9-4 record against regionally ranked opponents. We had a team with seven wins against regionally ranked opponents, three teams with profiles that suggested we could eliminate them from the discussion and a team with decent record and SOS but a 4-9 mark against regionally ranked teams.

The seven teams left on the board when Texas-Tyler was put in were Bethany Lutheran, Bowdoin, Buena Vista, Case Western Reserve, Ramapo, Rhodes and St. John Fisher.

Now, the matter of putting these teams in brackets. One of the difficulties was that we needed to put a minimum of 12 teams in the West and South regionals, but only had 11 good candidates. We knew that the West would require flights, but the location of Millington, Tenn., for the South regional left us with some oddities that we could only fill by flying a team. In this case, we flew Christopher Newport to the South Regional, even though we could have bused them to Marietta or Lakewood, N.J.

Unless otherwise noted, all teams are automatic qualifiers.

New England Regional at Harwich, Mass.
1. Tufts (26-7-1)      
2. Wheaton (29-10) 
3. Amherst (25-10)
4. Keene State (29-14) Pool C
5. MIT (25-13) Pool C
6. St Joseph's, Maine (30-13) 
7. Husson (29-15)
8. Bridgewater State (23-15) 

New York Regional at Auburn, N.Y.
1. Cortland State (33-8) 
2. Western New England (38-9)                
3. Brockport State (27-12) Pool C
4. Farmingdale State (25-14)                                                   
5. Keystone (32-10)
6. Misericordia (27-14)
7. Messiah (25-17)
8. Clarkson (19-17)

Mid-Atlantic Regional in Lakewood, N.J.                    
1. Kean (36-8) 
2. Rowan (30-11-1) Pool C
3. Alvernia (35-7) Pool C
4. Eastern Connecticut (32-11) Pool C
5. Johns Hopkins (25-13)
6. Rhode Island College (21-18)
7. Catholic (22-19) 
8. Mitchell (23-9-1)

Mideast Regional in Marietta, Ohio
1. Marietta (38-3) 
2. Shenandoah (34-5) Pool C
3. Frostburg State (28-13)
4. Salisbury (29-11) Pool C
5. New Jersey (25-12) Pool C
6. Penn State-Altoona (28-11)
7. Randolph-Macon (24-18)

Central Regional in Bloomington, Ill.
1. Coe (31-10)                    
2. Heidelberg (33-11) Pool C
3. Carthage (28-10)      
4. Adrian (31-9)   
5. Illinois Wesleyan (26-15) Pool C                    
6. Aurora (30-12)

South Regional in Millington, Tenn.            
1. Christopher Newport (39-5) 
2. Piedmont (30-13) Pool B              
3. Thomas More (28-7)    
4. Webster (33-11)     
5. Franklin (29-12)         
6. Wabash (21-20) 

Midwest Regional in Whitewater, Wis.            
1. UW-Stevens Point (32-8) 
2. St. Scholastica (35-5)  
3. UW-Whitewater (32-11) Pool C
4. Hamline (28-13)   
5. St. Thomas (27-16) Pool C      
6. Ripon (20-18)

West Regional in Abilene, Texas            
1. Linfield (31-9)          
2. Chapman (29-11) Pool B  
3. Redlands (29-11) 
4. Trinity (33-11)               
5. Texas-Tyler (33-6) Pool C       
6. Concordia, Texas (30-15) 

Stay tuned later tonight for the NCAA's official selections.