2024 D1Baseball Field Of 64 Projections: April 17
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It has been a couple of weeks since we did our first in-season postseason projections at the midseason mark. And as you might expect, there are several changes in the latest D1Baseball Field of 64 Projections.
From a top eight national seed standpoint, Kentucky has been on a heater the past few weeks and vaulted from a Top 16 host to a top-eight seed this week, vaulting all the way to No. 4 in our national seed pecking order. Dropping out of the top eight this week is East Carolina, which is strongly in the mix for a top eight but is behind a few other teams in the pecking order.
While the top eight spots were rather chalky this week, the opposite was the case in terms of the other host sites in the 9-16 seed range. A whopping five teams dropped out as hosts this week, including UCF, Nebraska, Dallas Baptist, Florida, and Vanderbilt.
All those teams except for Florida remain strongly in the mix for host sites. But this week, are replaced by Wake Forest, Oklahoma State, South Carolina, West Virginia and back again, Indiana State.
Wake is red-hot and continues to bolster its resume, Oklahoma State is the favorite in the Big 12 Conference for the time being, South Carolina picked up a road series win over Florida and has a head-to-head series sweep over Vandy on its resume, West Virginia is another surging Big 12 team and Indiana State once again is a favorite of the RPI, sitting at 8 in the ranking with a strong 10-2 mark in the Missouri Valley.
In terms of overall bids in the tournament, the SEC continues to lead the way with 10 bids in the field, while the ACC is close behind with 9 and the Big 12 has 8. The Pac-12 is the next conference in the pecking order with four bids, while the Sun Belt has three and the Big East, Big Ten, Big West, Missouri Valley and WCC each have two postseason bids. The postseason situations of the bubble teams will continue to be very fluid. For now, though, the bubble situation is very favorable for a lot of teams. Will that continue to be the case as we get closer to Selection Monday? We’ll soon find out.
Our projections are assembled each week by the trio of Mark Etheridge, Kendall Rogers, and Aaron Fitt. Together, the trio has more than 60 years of experience covering college baseball and putting together regional projections.
LAST FOUR IN: Florida, Texas, Boston College, Illinois-Chicago
FIRST FOUR OUT: Ole Miss, LSU, James Madison, St. John’s
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