Schedule musical chairs gets UConn a last-minute game
Boston College, Rhode Island, UConn and Yale had some last-minute schedule movements.
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Schedule Switches
Over seven days ago, head coach Jim Penders already knew that finding opponents for this set of midweek games would be a challenge.
“We started to work last week after the Boston College game,” he said.
Yale had two separate starting pitchers come down with season-ending injuries, and being good friends with the New Haven school’s head coach Brian Hamm, Penders was well aware of the situation. Had they come to Dunkin’ Park as scheduled on Tuesday, they could have been forced to throw multiple position players on the mound, and it could have gotten ugly quickly.
Brown was willing to move from their scheduled game on Wednesday against the Huskies to fill the slot on Tuesday, but that game, too, quickly evaporated. The Saturday game of Brown’s weekend series against Harvard was rained out and was rescheduled to Tuesday per Ivy League rules.
Left in a bind, UConn was trying all avenues to not only replace the game, but potentially benefit from the situation.
“We tried like crazy, we tried every team with a better RPI in the northeast,” Penders said. “You’re just hunting those RPI games this time of year.”
The team’s search even stretched as far as Delaware, the No. 113 team in RPI — the Huskies would have left a day early to play the Blue Hens before continuing on to Philadelphia for the weekend series against Villanova, according to Penders.
“I said ‘Brian, I’m trying, man,’” Penders recalled after Tuesday’s 9-0 win over Rhode Island. “And he was the one who texted me [with the news] at 4 or 5 o’clock yesterday.”
One of Hamm’s assistants had seen the situation at Boston College that followed their weekend series against North Carolina: After earning a surprise sweep against a top-50 RPI opponent, the Eagles’ moods were quickly dashed by the realization that their flight had lost their luggage.
With Rhode Island now looking for a midweek dance partner, Penders swooped in to the aid of his friend and former American Legion ball opponent Ralph Cerrato, now head coach of the Rams, and provide a solution that worked for both teams.
RPI Update
As of the start of play on April 27, UConn is at No. 14 in the RPI according to Warren Nolan and is by far the standard-bearer in the Big East. The Huskies have fallen one spot over the past week after taking two out of three from Georgetown at home, coupled with a 9-0 victory over Rhode Island on Tuesday.
Xavier, from which UConn took two of three on the road, is holding in the back end of the top 50, while Creighton has surged more than 30 spots over the past few weeks to knock on the door of the top 100. If the Bluejays can keep winning games, this could create another Quad 2 road series to end the season. Meanwhile, St. John’s has fallen more than 30 spots in the past three weeks and have fallen into Quad 4 territory. The Hoyas, at No. 120, are the only other non-Quad 4 team.
Jim Penders’ team has 15 games remaining before the Big East Tournament and will need to win a whole ton of those contests to keep its lofty RPI figure. According to Boyds’ World’s RPI Needs Report, which measures how high a team can reach in the RPI in a vacuum, the Huskies need to go undefeated to stay in the top 16.
The average RPI of its final 15 games is 200.5, with 10 sub-200 battles, in which a win would earn the Huskies a few RPI points, but a loss would prove disastrous and push them down several spots in the rankings.
Bracketology
UConn was slotted at No. 16 by Baseball America in last week’s field of 64 forecast, but have fallen out of a host spot this week, as the Huskies are projected to go to No. 13 Boston College, along with Northeastern and Columbia. The Huskies are 2-3 against Baseball America’s field, including 1-1 against the Eagles, with a win over CCSU, the 4-seed in No. 5 Vanderbilt’s Nashville Regional, in addition to defeats at the hands of the Huskies and Lions.
According to Baseball America, UConn joins Dallas Baptist, East Carolina and Southern Miss as the hosts that just missed. While the Storrs nine and Eagles can both host, the committee hasn’t brought a regional to this part of the country since 2010 and have only granted one 1-seed since the tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1999, doing so with Rutgers in 2000.
UConn took care of business last weekend against Georgetown, taking two of three at home, but Boston College went to Chapel Hill and swept North Carolina, which helped the Eagles take the hosting spot back.
D1Baseball.com is more bullish on the Huskies, pushing them up from No. 15 to No. 11. Notably, the outlet has Boston College one spot higher, at No. 10. This would result in two regionals in the Northeast. The Storrs Regional features 2-seed Miami (FL), 3-seed UCLA and 4-seed CCSU.
The Week Ahead
Friday: at Villanova, 3 p.m., FloSports
Saturday: at Villanova, 1 p.m., FloSports
Sunday: at Villanova, 12 p.m., FloSports
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