IU baseball can eliminate all doubt this week in Omaha.
Firmly on the bubble, the Hoosiers can win the Big Ten Tournament at Charles Schwab Field and earn the league’s automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.
Short of that, it appears IU will be sweating it out on Selection Monday next week.
They’re off to a good start after an 8-6 win over Purdue to open the Big Ten Tournament on Tuesday.
Here’s what Baseball America says about where the Hoosiers stand as it relates to the NCAA Tournament as of Wednesday, after that win over the Boilermakers:
Indiana (31-22-1, 16-9; RPI: 55; SOS: 43): The Hoosiers have a fascinating bubble case. While their RPI is on the wrong side of 50, their KPI is higher (44) and they have solid top-end wins (6-8 in quad 1, 12-12-1 in quads 1 and 2). They’ve also built a pretty compelling case that they are the third-best team in the Big Ten, a conference that pretty typically gets at least three bids. To me, they are squarely on the bubble today. That’s not good enough, however, because the bubble always shrinks due to conference tournament upsets. Indiana needs to keep winning in the Big Ten Tournament and on Thursday faces Ohio State in a winner’s bracket game.
Baseball America currently has IU as the No. 3 seed in the Knoxville Regional as things stand on Wednesday.
In other projections of the NCAA field of 64, D1 Baseball had IU out, and not one of the first four out, prior to their Tuesday Big Ten Tournament win over Purdue. On3 had Indiana as the sixth team out prior to that win over Purdue.
So clearly Indiana could use a couple more wins in Omaha.
The Hoosiers can further bolster their case against current RPI No. 58 Ohio State on Thursday (3 p.m. ET, BTN).
The NCAA field will be revealed next Monday.
The NCAA Regionals, NCAA Super Regionals and College World Series are set for May 31-June 3, June 7-10 and June 14-24, respectively.
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