75% of running Razorbacks for RPI focuses on success of opponents, teams Hogs don’t play
Dave Van Horn needs to be better at his job. That’s the message the selection committee for the college baseball NCAA Tournament wants to make clear.
The Arkansas coach is too traditional in his approach and he needs to change because he’s not paying attention to 75% of what they deem his responsibility. Obviously, that message hadn’t gotten across by Sunday evening because Van Horn was still spouting common sense and preaching the value of beating great teams over and over.
“I think we helped ourselves the last couple of weeks,” Van Horn said following the loss to Georgia in the SEC championship game Sunday after nearly two weeks of living in hotels with his team. “I don’t think it’s about what we’ve done the last couple of weeks because I think it’s about the whole year. Like I’ve said, we’ve won seven series out of 10 in the SEC, won three games here, played a lot of Quad 1 teams, and we’ve won a lot of games. So, yeah, I hope we get to play at home.”
It’s the selection committee’s mission to make sure such thinking is stomped out of college baseball and ensuring that began Sunday night by announcing the Hogs, a Top 10 team with the second most Quad 1 wins in the entire country, will not be hosting a regional.
The Razorbacks were out there doing silly things like sweeping Alabama in Tuscaloosa, winning the series over Mississippi State or knocking off Auburn in the SEC Tournament, all teams that found out they are responsible for hosting this coming weekend because their coaches understood the job.
The Bulldogs were the team thrown in to make sure Van Horn gets the point as clearly as possible. In addition to losing the series to the Hogs and finishing behind them in the SEC standings, Mississippi State won a singular game over woeful Missouri in the SEC Tournament while Arkansas ripped off wins over three consecutive ranked opponents, including going back-to-back over No. 5 Texas and No. 6 Auburn.
There’s also that little stat about the Bulldogs getting 13 wins total against Quad 1 and Quad 2 opponents combined, four games below .500 with only a 9-14 record against Quad 1. Meanwhile, the Razorbacks won 21 games against Quad 1 and Quad 2, including getting nearly half their wins against Quad 1 teams with an 18-13 record against the best of the best.
All proof Van Horn just didn’t get it. When Arkansas beat No. 6 Auburn their RPI, the holy grail of metrics that says coaching a team to wins is only 25% of the job, didn’t move at all because huge wins over elite teams have no value.
Baseball isn’t about how many national championship contenders a team can knock off. It’s about who that team can avoid playing.
Look at Oregon coach Mark Wasikowski, a man who really gets what matters in baseball. When he saw Grand Canyon wanted to come play a pair of games in Eugene late in the season, Wasikowski took one glance at the RPI calculator and realized if his team took the field against the Antelopes, it would hurt his Ducks no matter what because Grand Canyon did a poor job of recruiting this season, as did Pacific, a team on the Antelopes’ schedule with a losing record against weak teams similar to GCU’s.
So, Wasikowski did what the selection committee wants to see out of its highlighted host teams. He sent a letter of cancellation informing Grand Canyon coach Nathan Bannister that if he followed through on travel plans that had been in place for months, there would be no one waiting to play them.
The NCAA sent out a memo rebuking such practices that apparently Van Horn took seriously, which must have given the selection committee quite the laugh over the weekend.
“It is not the intent or spirit of the game to adjust scheduled games in an attempt to strategically impact selection data or metrics,” the memo reportedly said.
It went on to say the selection committee would track games cancelled for the sake of RPI impact with the possibility that it could be held against a team in a negative manner.
Oregon successfully managed to manipulate its RPI, overcoming its 12 Quad 1 wins through the power of math, to finish No. 15 in the RPI rankings with a claim to a Eugene regional.
If Van Horn wants three to six home games played by the Razorbacks in the postseason with Hogs fans packed to the gills, waving flags and grilling up Lord knows what, then he’s got to learn to keep a form letter handy throughout the season. If he sees a team coming up on the schedule for a mid-week game in a few days that has done a poor job of collecting wins (50% of RPI) or that has been playing teams that aren’t winning a lot of games (25% of RPI), boom, e-mail sent with formal cancellation.
Northwestern State coming up for a pair of games? Letter.
Arkansas-Pine Bluff planning a trip to Fayetteville en route to a 25-33 record? Letter.
Northern Colorado in for a pair of March games with a weak looking roster? Letter.
Suddenly Van Horn is finally paying attention to the 75% of the job that actually matters — whether his opponents and their opponents are winning, not his team.
He doesn’t need to focus on what’s going on during the Razorbacks’ games. That’s what assistants are for.
Instead, he needs to be aware that Arkansas State has Southern Illinois scheduled and the Salukis are about to blow up the Hogs’ RPI by losing to a Queens team that is going to finish 16-38. There’s no time to be talking with Matt Hobbs about which Arkansas reliever to turn to if Cole Gibler gets knocked around in the early innings.
He’s got to get in the horn with Southern Illinois coach Lance Rhodes and tell him to pull Dylan Petrey for literally anyone else in the bullpen because he is grooving pitches and is about to blow an 8-5 lead over the Royals by giving up a pair of homers in the eighth and a couple of sacrifice flies in the ninth.
If only Van Horn would do his job, maybe he too could host a regional. However, until he learns 50% of his job is whether his opponents win, which he does a terrible job of helping out with by posting 39 victories, and another 25% of his job is making sure the opponents of his opponents have strong rosters and quality coaches willing to make necessary in-game decisions, Arkansas will just have to settle for watching other schools host college baseball regionals while Baum-Walker sits quietly.
(Note: Yes, it is understood that coaches like Van Horn lightly manipulate the RPI by pre-emptively not scheduling mid-week games the final few weeks of the season, but the importance of the story isn’t necessarily Van Horn specifically. It’s about the overall message being pushed out and how absurd it is.
Any coach in the SEC could have been used except perhaps Alabama and Mississippi State.)
