Will Georgia Tech Need A Good Performance In The ACC Tournament To Secure A Spot in The NCAA Tournament?

What does Georgia Tech Baseball need to do to get a spot in the ACC Tournament?

Georgia Tech had been playing one of the most difficult stretches of any team in the ACC when they finished up their regular season with a third straight top ten opponent, losing their series to No. 10 Florida State. It was their third straight top ten series down the stretch and while that was a tough stretch to end the season, Georgia Tech arguably draws the toughest pool in the ACC Tournament, having to face Virginia and Florida State this week. Nothing is going to come easy for Danny Hall's team this week and how they play could determine if they make the NCAA Tournament when this week is over.

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.

If the Yellow Jackets can go 1-1 in pool play, I think they can get in. Both Florida State and Virginia are top 12 in RPI and getting one win might be good enough. Where things could get dicey is if they lose both games and they are both blowouts. That is a worst case scenario for Georgia Tech and they might be squeezed out if that happens. If they were to beat both teams and get out of the pool, I think Georgia Tech is safely in. It is going to be an interesting couple of days for Georgia Tech and how they play could determine their postseason fate.

No. 9-seeded Georgia Tech baseball will play No. 5-seeded Florida State on Tuesday, May 21 at 3 p.m. and No. 4-seeded Virginia on Wednesday, May 22 at 11 a.m.