UConn baseball on edge as NCAA Tournament bids are revealed; CCSU, Fairfield clinch spots
Coach Jim Penders and UConn’s baseball team returned from the Big East tournament to face a sleepless night and a little intestinal discomfort.
“We’ll have a little agita, for sure,” Penders said Sunday, as he rode the bus back to campus.
The Huskies, who lost to Creighton, 7-4, in the tournament final on Saturday, will have to hope that the intestinal fortitude they showed through the second half of the season is enough to convince the NCAA selection committee to include them in the field of 64, to be revealed at noon on Monday.
“We had one of the best second halves in the country,” Penders said. “I feel full in a lot of ways that our guys represented our program and our heritage very well with our fight after having dug such a big hole early in the season. To compete the way we did down the stretch was awesome.”
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UConn (38-21) is on the dreaded bubble as the committee sorts out 29 automatic qualifiers and the dozens of contenders for 35 at-large bids. That is now beyond UConn’s ability to control. The Huskies were 13-17 in April, and lost their first two conference series to Creighton and Xavier, then won 15 conference games in a row and 25 of their last 29 games. But there is more to being selected than just finishing strong.
“We feel as though our resume speaks for itself,” Penders said, “we’re not going to go politicking or tweeting or begging for a bid. We’ll let the entirety of the season will speak for itself and merits pretty well. That being said, the committee has a hard job to do and we’re going to be right on that edge.”
Central Connecticut and Fairfield won conference titles and automatic bids Sunday and await their NCAA assignments. Brady Short scored on a wild pitch in the 12th inning to lift CCSU to a 6-5 victory over LIU at Wappingers Falls, N.Y., and its ninth NEC title under coach Charlie Hickey. Central (31-15), third in the nation in hitting with a .334 team average, won Friday and Saturday, but lost to LIU, the No. 1 seed, in the first game on Sunday. Reliever Wyatt Cameron, the tournament MVP, pitched in all four games, and held LIU scoreless for 4 2/3 innings to get the victory.
“In these games, you’ve got to win at all cost, you’ve got to get your best guys out there and ride ’em,” Hickey said. “Wyatt got us started in the winner’s bracket Friday, and he just kept battling and battling. We wouldn’t have slept all summer if we didn’t have our best guy.”
Short scored three runs in the deciding game, the winning run in the 12th on what would have been an inning-ending strikeout had the ball been caught. Aidan Redahan had two hits and two RBI, and Antonio Ducatelli had two doubles for the Blue Devils. Hickey got his 800th career win on Saturday, but No. 801 was the one he wanted to take home.
“Definitely going to savor this one more than the previous one,” he said, as his team was boarding the bus back to New Britain.
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Fairfield is heading to the Tournament for the third time, after freshman Nolan Colby blasted a 10th-inning home run to lift the Stags to a 7-6 victory over Rider to clinch the MAAC championship in Pomona, N.Y. The Stags (39-17) controlled the tournament with wins over Sacred Heart and Rider, then after Rider rallied to tie the game Sunday, prevailed. Ridgefield’s Matthew Bucciero drive in two runs, to become the program’s career RBI leader, and TJ Schmalze also homered.
It is not considered likely that the NCAA will take three Big East teams, as the conference is ranked 12th in strength metrics and had only the top three teams in the top 100 RPI. Two “bid steals,” or upsets in conference tournaments Saturday, in which Texas-San Antonio won the AAC’s automatic bid and Western Kentucky took Conference USA’s, have made the bubble even smaller. It could make Creighton the Big East’s only entry in the Field of 64.
If it comes down to UConn, 40th in RPI, or Xavier, 39th, for one of the last spots, it will be a razor’s edge choice. In their latest bracket projections, Baseball America and D1baseball.com both have UConn among its last four in, Xavier among its first four out.
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UConn (19-6) has better overall and conference records, but Xavier (32-27, 15-9) beat UConn three of five in head-to-head play. UConn was 3-6 vs. the top two teams in the conference, but did eliminate Xavier in the conference tournament on Friday. UConn has a several out-of-conference wins that could play well with the committee, such as two in three games at Miami, and single wins over North Carolina, seventh in RPI and the ACC champion, and Vanderbilt, which is No.1 and won the SEC title, and beat several other eventual conference champs. But the Huskies’ non conference strength of schedule is ranked 48th, Xavier’s fourth. UConn’s national reputation and recent history of strong performances in the tournament, reaching the Super Regional round in 2022 and 24, is an intangible that could influence a subjective choice.
The Huskies will be keeping tabs on other conference tournament finals for clues, and then gather on campus and watch the Selection Show.
“We’ve been there six straight times and we know what an NCAA-caliber team looks like and we feel as if we have one,” Penders said. “But it’s up to other folks. It’s just a frustrating feeling when you’re a competitor and you’re no longer competing, you’re wishing and hoping for another opportunity to compete. “
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