BALTIMORE, Maryland May 26, 2014 - It has been so long since Maryland played in an NCAA Baseball Tournament that the players on that team are now in their sixties. The conference they play in now, the ACC, placed seven schools in the 64 team field. Yet the conference is so strong that three other schools felt like they should have been included.
The NCAA named the 64 teams that will play in the National Tournament, culminating in the eight-team College World Series later next month in Omaha, Nebraska. Maryland is in, and will play Old Dominion later this week at the field of the host school, the powerful South Carolina Gamecocks. This regional tournament, consisting of four teams, is a double-elimination affair. If the Terps win their first game, they will play the winner of South Carolina and Campbell. Should Maryland emerge from their regional, they would play the winner of the Virginia Regional (Virginia, Bucknell, Liberty and Arkansas) in the so-called super-regional. If Virginia wins their regional, Maryland would play the super-regional in Charlottesville. If Maryland wins their regional and somebody besides Virginia wins that regional, there is some chance that the super-regional would be at Maryland, but don't bet on it.
There are 16 regional tournaments, each with four teams. As noted above, the 16 winners advance to what are called "Super Regionals," the following weekend. The super-regionals consist of two teams. Thus, there will be eight of them. The eight winners of the super-regionals advance to the College World Series. The super-regionals match the two teams in each one in a best of three series.
If the ACC considers it impressive to have 7 of their 14 baseball-playing schools named to the naational tournament, consider the powerful SEC. That conference has ten of their schools in the national tournament. The head of the selection committee was on ESPNU at noon on Monday, and he said that the top five seeds in the tournament were very easy to name. Two of those schools play in the ACC. They are Virginia and Florida State. Maryland beat both of those schools in the ACC tournament. The other three schools in the top five are Florida, Oregon State, and Indiana. One other ACC School, MIami, is a regional host. The top 8 seeds are automatically the home team all the way through the tournament until and if they qualify for the College World Series. In other words, if a top 8 school wins the regional they host, they would then host a super regional. Seeds 9 through 16 get to host a regional, but, if they win that, they must travel to a top 8 seed for the super regional. All of this is contingent on the seeds winning their regionals, something that does not always happen. Maryland, for instance, is a No. 2 seed.
The Terps battled their way into the ACC Title game, and actually led that game after six innings, only to have Georgia Tech rally against the Maryland bullpen for a 9-4 win. Tech jumped on Jake Drossner, the Maryland starter, for two runs in the first inning. The Terps scored their first run in the bottom of the second when Blake Schmit hit his first home run of the season. Then Tech pushed their lead back to two runs with a single run in the top of the fourth. Maryland answered with a single run in their half of the fourth. Anthony Papio ripped a two out single to score the run, making it 3-2, Tech. Maryland struck for two more runs in the sixth to take their only lead of the game. First, the Terps loaded the bases with nobody out on a walk and two singles. Anthony Papio tied the game with another run-scoring single, and the bases remained loaded. The go-ahead run scored when Kevin Martir hit into a double play and Lewis scooted home as Tech went around the horn.
The lead did not last. The Yellow Jackets - which in winning earned the ACC's one automatic bid, something, as it turned out, the Jackets would not have gotten had Maryland won - tied the game with a single run in the top of the seventh. With the score now tied, Tech came up in the 8th inning and scored three runs on three hits and a huge Maryland throwing error committed by pitcher Kevin Mooney. The Yellowjackets scored two insurance runs in the ninth off of Ben Brewster.
Unlike Georgia Tech, Maryland was in the NCAA Tournament whether or not they won the Sunday game. Interestingly, the Selection Committee told ESPNU that North Carolina and Clemson were two of the last four teams in the tournament field, but none of the three snubbed ACC teams: North Carolina State, Duke and Wake Forest, were said to be among the first four out. What that means is that North Carolina and Georgia Tech needed to beat Maryland to get in the tournament and that is what both did. Maryland, on the other hand, not only got in the tournament as an at-large team, but were awarded a number two seed. That means that in the minds of the Selection Committee, they are among the top 32 teams in the USA. Try telling that to the Maryland fans who watched the selection show on ESPNU Monday afternoon. Maryland was one of the final teams announced as making the field. It was just wonderful. I was comforted in the knowledge that North Carolina was in, which should have guaranteed Maryland a berth since the Terps finished above the Tar Heels in the ACC Standings and in terms of their overall record. As it turned out, that was not a sure sign they were in, since Duke also had a better ACC record than did North Carolina, but they didn't get in. And Duke came within an eyelash of making the ACC Title Game Sunday. They lost in 12 innings to Miami Saturday afternoon. Had they won, they, and not Georgia Tech, would have played Maryland Sunday.
The way that the regional sets up raises some interesting strategy questions for Maryland Coach John Szefc. You must win at least three games, and maybe as many as five, to win the regional, which is played out over as many as four days beginning Friday. The easy strategy is to have the best pitcher you have available start each game. If Szefc follows that strategy - as he did in the ACC Tournament - Jake Stinnett would start against Old Dominion. If the Tournament follows form, and both Maryland and South Carolina win their opening game, they would play each other Saturday night, and the Terps would have Mike Shawaryn on the hill. If Maryland also wins that game, they would have Jake Drossner start the potential championship game Sunday night. That strategy worked in the ACC Tournament right up to the championship game.
But there is another strategy, and it has its risks. In this 'other' strategy, Maryland has Drossner start the first game against Old Dominion. If Maryland can beat Old Dominion with Drossner, they would have Stinnett available to face South Carolina on Saturday and, if they win, Mike Shawaryn available to face whoever emerges from the loser's bracket on Sunday night for the Championship.
One coach who followed this second strategy was North Carolina State Coach Elliott Avent. State barely qualified for the ACC Tournament and Avent knew that his only hope to gain entry to the NCAA Tournament was to win the ACC Tournament. To win the ACC, he had to first win a play-in game on Tuesday. But instead of starting his top pitcher, Carlos Rodon, whom many believe will be the overall #1 pick in the upcoming MLB Draft, Avent decided to try to win the play-in with a host of bullpen pitchers, saving his best starters for the powerful teams they would have to play if they could get by the play-in. It almost worked, but almost doesn't count. State lost the play-in the North Carolina, 4-3. If the same thing happened to Maryland - if Szefc started Drossner against Old Dominion and lost the game - Maryland would be dumped into the loser's bracket and have to win five games to win the regional. Maryland's bullpen did not perform well in the ACC tournament.
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