So basically, Utah is eliminated from the Pac-12 baseball tournament?

[AlohaUte]

The Pac-12 baseball tournament wrapped up day 2 of three today. There are three pools of three teams. With the way the tournament is structured, if Utah lost a single game, they are eliminated, even if all three teams in the pool finish 1-1.

Utah is the 7th seed, the lowest seed in their pool. They lost game 1 yesterday to USC, which apparently effectively eliminated them. They beat Oregon today, but it was pointless, even though if Oregon were to beat USC today, all three teams would finish 1-1.

This is because the tiebreaker goes to the highest seeded team. (On this point, even the game tomorrow is pointless because if USC wins, they win the pool and are in the semifinals. If Oregon wins, there’s a three way tie and USC is the highest seeded team so they are through to the semis. So why even play the game tomorrow?)

There is a wildcard team that makes it into the semifinals, but this goes to the team with the best record of the eliminated teams (which I think is Oregon State?).

Honestly, it’s a pretty frustrating structure. I’d rather tie breaker be based on run differential in pool play or something like that. Essentially, Utah had to win both their games while USC only had to win one (so long as no team won both).

[D T]

“It brought Utah to a 1-1 record in the Pool Play stage of the tournament. Though there was still a path to the Semifinal Round for Utah this morning, Stanford’s win over Oregon State earlier in the day mathematically eliminated the Utes. Each of the three pool winners are guaranteed to advance, plus one wild card team with the next-best record.

Ties for the next-best record are broken by tournament seeding, and other results throughout Pool Play ensured that at least one team seeded above Utah would finish 1-1 and advance to the Semifinal Round as a wild card.”

[CoyoteUte]

Soooo the end of the Pac12 era for the Utes has officially arrived?

[The Miami Ute]

Utah got hurt by losing four straight games to end the season to a mediocre USC baseball team. Suffice it to say that if USC hadn’t won those games, they’d be a team with a losing record. I guess they’re doing to us in baseball what they can’t do in football.