Georgia Tech Baseball Is Projected As A No. 3 Seed In D1Baseball's Latest Field of 64 Projections

In D1Baseball's latest field of 64 projections, Georgia Tech Baseball is a No. 3 seed

Georgia Tech wrapped up their regular season on Saturday when they won the third game of their series vs Florida State and they will head into the ACC Tournament hoping to get an NCAA Tournament bid. The Yellow Jackets have been on the bubble for the past couple of weeks, but they have a solid enough resume and unless there are a number of bid stealers, I think the Yellow Jackets will find themselves safely in the Tournament.

In the latest projections from D1Baseball, Georgia Tech does not find themselves in the last four in or last four out category, but as the No. 3 seed in a region hosted by No. 2 Tennessee. The other two teams in the region include UConn and Fairfield.

Georgia Tech's last NCAA appearance sent them to Knoxville in 2022.

As of today, Tennessee is No. 5 in RPI, UConn is No. 37, and Fairfield is No. 160. The Volunteers would be the favorites, but Georgia Tech would have a chance to come out of this. It would likely just come down to the pitching for them.

Let's take a look at Georgia Tech's resume heading into tomorrow's ACC Tournament.

Georgia Tech finishes the season 31-21 (15-15 ACC) with an RPI of 46 and a KPI of 33. What is KPI? Here is an explanation from baseballamerica.com:

"Kevin Pauga first created KPI as a basketball rating system. Pauga, who is now an associate athletic director at Michigan State, has since adapted KPI for sports from baseball to field hockey to volleyball. It rates every win and loss on a positive-to-negative scale, where the best possible win is about 1.0 and the worst loss is about -1.0. The scores are then averaged across the entire season to create the team’s rating.

KPI assesses a variety of factors when it’s scoring a win or loss, including the strength of the opponent, the game’s location and the score (that is one significant factor that differentiates KPI from RPI, which treats a one-run win the same as a 20-run win). During the 2023 season, the best win according to KPI was Alabama’s 12-1 victory at Arkansas on March 31, which was rated 1.36. The worst loss by an at-large NCAA Tournament team was Tennessee’s 12-5 home loss to Tennessee Tech on April 18, which was rated -0.744."

Every ACC team with a .500 or better record and RPI of 50 or better has made the NCAA Tournament. With that being said, every ACC team with a .500 or worse record and RPI worse than 50 has not been selected.

Georgia Tech played four Top 15 RPI (top 10 KPI) road ACC series – RPI No. 4/KPI No. 6 North Carolina, No. 7/7 Clemson, No. 8/8 Florida State, and No. 13/9 Virginia. The Yellow Jackets rank top 25 nationally with 14 Quad 1+2 wins. Facing the third-toughest schedule in the nation with six weeks to go, Georgia Tech climbed the mountain and took series wins over No. 16-ranked Virginia Tech, No. 10 Virginia and No. 9 Duke to go with their earlier sweep over No. 13 NC State and series wins against Pitt and Miami.

While those are the good things for Georgia Tech, let's take a look at why they are on the bubble heading into the ACC Tournament and not comfortably in the field.

Georgia Tech has some really good wins this season over some of the best teams in the conference and the country, but they have quite a few head scratching performances. They had a bad loss to Cornell (194th in RPI), they were swept by Boston College (82nd in RPI, did not make the ACC Tournament), there is a loss to Pitt (83rd), two losses to Auburn (45th RPI), and a loss to Miami (90th RPI). It is tough to go through a whole season in college baseball without having a bad or weird loss, but Georgia Tech has eight of them, not just one or two. If they miss they NCAA Tournament, you can go back and look at the Boston College sweep, the loss to Cornell, and the losses to Pitt and Miami and see why Georgia Tech did not make it.

I think that Georgia Tech will be in the Tournament unless there are bid stealers or they were to get run-ruled in both games in pool play. We will find out next Monday.