5/5/2008 – NCAA RANKINGS: Bruins Pleasantly Surprised by No. 2 West Region Rating
NEWBERG, Ore. – After taking three of four games on the road against eventual Northwest Conference champion Linfield College on April 27-28, the George Fox University Bruins were hoping just to move into the NCAA Division III West Regional baseball rankings. Imagine their surprise - and delight - to find that they had vaulted all the way into the No. 2 spot when the latest rankings came out on May 1.
“Obviously, the voters thought our performance against an outstanding club like Linfield on the road meant a lot,” said Marty Hunter, who is in his first season as the Bruins’ head coach. “We thought that effort might get us into the rankings, but we certainly weren’t expecting to go from unranked to second. We won’t turn it down, of course.”
Chapman, the No. 1-ranked team in the country, was the West’s top-rated team with a 32-3 overall record and a 25-3 in-region mark, followed by George Fox (28-12, 27-11 in region), the University of Texas-Tyler (35-7, 32-7), Concordia University-Austin (28-14, 24-11), Pomona-Pitzer Colleges (27-10, 18-9), and the University of Redlands (26-11, 19-6). Texas-Tyler had been ranked 2nd, Pomona-Pitzer 4th, and Redlands 5th in the previous poll, while Linfield had been 3rd and California State University-East Bay 6th, but both dropped out of the top six in the latest poll.
Over the weekend, Texas-Tyler went 1-2 to finish third in American Southwest Conference Tournament, Concordia went 2-2 to finish second to McMurry University in the ASC Tournament, Pomona-Pitzer went 0-3 and Redlands went 1-2 to finish fourth and second respectively to the University of La Verne in the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference standings, and Cal State-East Bay went 4-0 on a road swing through the St. Louis area.
In last week’s D3baseball.com national rankings, the Bruins were not ranked in the top 25, but did receive the seventh-most votes among “others receiving votes” with 25. The Bruins’ 3-1 series win at Linfield knocked the Wildcats from 21st to fourth among “others” with 46 points, though they did win the final game of the series in a “winner-take-all” contest to wrap up the conference title.
Hunter cited the Bruins’ strength-of-schedule as one factor that may have played a major role in their tremendous climb in the regional ratings.
“It pays to play good teams out of conference and win a few of them,” Hunter pointed out. “We opened the season by taking two out of three on the road against a very good McMurry club, and took one of three at East Bay, which I understand is rated as having the toughest schedule in the country. Finishing only one game out in what is considered a strong conference and winning the series at the conference champion’s place certainly helps, too.”
Regional rankings do not determine who makes the NCAA post-season playoffs, however, so the Bruins are still relegated to hoping for an at-large bid and waiting on the May 11 announcement of the tournament field before knowing if they are in and where they might go. There are 34 automatic bids for conference regular-season or tournament champions (Pool A), six spots for independents or members of conferences without automatic bids (Pool B), and 14 at-large spots for everyone else (Pool C).
The West Regional, one of eight regionals to determine the field for the NCAA Division III World Series in Appleton, Wisc., will be held at McMurry in Abilene, Texas, starting May 14, but there is no guarantee that the Bruins would go there, even if they are selected. Five regionals will have six teams and three will have eight.
“If we have an eight-team regional, we probably would go to McMurry, but if the West is only a six-team tournament, we could get shipped out,” said Hunter. “That’s if we make it; there are still a lot of conference tournaments to be played. We just don’t need too many upsets.”
Teams from the West who have already secured Pool A bids include Linfield as the NWC champion, La Verne as the SCIAC champion, McMurry as the ASC Tournament champion, and Trinity University of San Antonio, Texas, as the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference Tournament winner. Chapman is a virtual shoo-in as a Pool B team, and Cal State-East Bay is another strong Pool B candidate, though they could be dropped into Pool C if they are not taken from Pool B.
If George Fox is selected on Sunday, it would be the Bruins’ third straight post-season appearance and seventh time in nine seasons as NCAA-eligible members to make the playoffs. They are 14-11 in their six NCAA tournaments (2000, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2006, and 2007), including a 9-1 mark in 2004 that resulted in an NCAA Division III national championship.