The Huskies caught fire with a 13-game winning streak at one point but struggled when competition cranked up.
The last time UConn baseball did not make the NCAA Tournament was 2017, when the team also landed among the first four out. Back then, it was tough losses in the midweek that dragged down the Huskies’ RPI. This time, it was underperforming against above-average competition.
During NCAA Division I Baseball Committee Chair Jay Artigues’ interview with ESPN following the field of 64 reveal, he cited UConn’s 3-6 record against Creighton and Xavier — as well as its 3-4 record against the RPI top 100 since April 15 — as a reason to leave Jim Penders’ squad out.
Creighton and Xavier, the latter of which was also excluded from the field, are both top-50 RPI programs this year and are the only other top-100 teams in the Big East.
According to D1Baseball.com’s Shotgun Spratling, UConn was the final team in the country to play a home series this year and had just four non-Quad 4 games at home, which means most of its high-end contests came away from Elliot Ballpark. However, the Huskies were 10-18 against the RPI top 100.
Most of those games came away from the traditional weekend series format with just four weekend series on the docket, all of which were on the road at Creighton, Florida Atlantic, Miami (FL) and Xavier. UConn lost three of those series, only beating Miami (FL) for a 5-7 record in these games.
That doesn’t include a win over No. 2 overall seed Vanderbilt, which came on a Sunday as part of the Dodger Classic in Los Angeles.
The weekend win over the Hurricanes joined a sweep over UNC Greensboro as the only winning weekend for the Huskies over the first eight weeks of the regular season, which coincided with a decrease in competition.
This isn’t to say Penders’ team had a bad season. It was certainly worthy of selection to the field of 64. The Huskies were still in the RPI top 50, extending a streak started in 2016. They shared the Big East regular season title, earning at least a portion of the crown each year since returning to the league. They also made it to a conference final out of the losers’ bracket.
UConn did a great job proving it was a class above sub-100 competition. The Storrs nine swept their final six weekend series for a perfect 18-0 record with a plus-124 run differential. Overall, the Huskies were 28-3 against sub-100 competition with all three losses coming away from home in the first month of the season. Four of their 17 Quad 4 wins were by less than four runs.
When it came down to it, UConn was clearly ahead of the bottom two-thirds of the country. However, there are only 35 at-large bids to the NCAA Tournament, which is just over 10 percent of Division I. It’s an elite group that extends just a bit bigger when conference champions from the top leagues are included. The Huskies didn’t do enough against teams inside and close enough to that caliber of program this season to prove it belonged, which is why they’ll be staying home this June.