Kentucky Baseball: The Week Ahead (May 8-14)

It sure feels better writing this after a weekend sweep over a top 5 college baseball team.

Kentucky begins the week full of momentum with that sweep, which improves their record to 33-13 (14-10), and improve their chances of making a run at a first day bye in the SEC Tournament, as well as a move toward getting back in the hosting discussion for the NCAA Tournament (which would require them to finish in the top 16).

Polls are coming out today and we're seeing Kentucky return to the top 25 in early results, although not in the top 16 in the first couple I have seen.

D1 Baseball has Kentucky back in the polls at #17 after being unranked last week.
Collegiate Baseball moved Kentucky into their top 30 at #21. It was the biggest jump for any team in the polls.
Baseball America has Kentucky at #19. We are still waiting for USA Today Coaches Polls to be released, which hopefully will have Kentucky the highest – last week they were the only one of the four major polls who had Kentucky ranked, at #21.

The three game sweep over South Carolina last weekend moved Kentucky from the baseball RPI #4 backup to the top at #1. At this point, it's really just for bragging rights as RPI is usually used for determining selection to the NCAA Tournament, and you'd have to believe that Kentucky has more than earned its right already. Efforts made to improve the schedule (okay, "game" the schedule) were a resounding success, as Kentucky quickly rose to the top of the RPI rankings, and once the SEC schedule hit, has stayed at the very top. I think that was critical if Kentucky wasn't doing so well this season overall, and maybe not quite so important anymore. Go figure, the one-year we don't need it.

It will be an interesting exercise to see what happens, as we play our last out of conference game of the season Tuesday against Tennessee Tech, and RPI #255 team. It's generally not a good idea to play that kind of team at any time, but this is one year when we can probably afford it, even if it drops us in RPI. It may not drop us in RPI if we win, but odds are it will drop us mathematically, even if our ordinal ranking remains #1. And it may drop us more than that, I just don't know at this point in the season. I know that other teams have canceled games like this toward the end of the season when they were bubble teams.

After the Tennessee Tech game, we will travel to Knoxville this weekend, beginning on Friday night at 6:30 PM to face a surging Tennessee team. They struggled for much of the season, and have been red-hot of late (they have won 8 straight in Knoxville, including sweeps over Vanderbilt and Mississippi State), with their record now at a very solid 32-16. After this weekend's series, we return home and will host Florida Thursday, Friday and Saturday of next week to finish the regular-season.

Last weekend was so important to stop the bleeding for Kentucky. We sat at a respectable 11-10 in the SEC, but just that--respectable, and were in danger of dropping below .500. Moving to 4 games over .500 in the tough SEC is very good.

Of course, I want Kentucky to stay hot and win everything, but I'd really like to see us win 3 of the remaining 6 SEC games, and I'd call it good. With a (hopeful) win over Tennessee Tech, it would have us entering postseason play 37-16 (17-13 SEC), and I think back in the top 16. I don't think we stand a chance of getting in the top 8, but the higher we can get, the better--if we host as the # 16 seed, and happen to win our Regional--two pretty big assumptions on my part--then we would likely travel to the # 1 team in the country in a Super Regional. I'd rather us be # 12 and face the # 5 overall, although they will all be tough.

Anyway, 4 important games this week. They all are the rest of the season.