Can the Beavers Land a Super Regional Hosting Spot To Close Out the Season?

Oregon State Baseball has been on a quite a run lately, including closing out a series win over UCLA with a 21-5 victory Sunday afternoon. With the end of the regular season quickly approaching, the Beavers have made a strong case for postseason play. The Beavers will be in the NCAA Tournament, but what seed and where they will play is still very up in the air.

The Beavers didn’t help matters by dropping a midweek game against the Portland Pilots right after their big win over UCLA. Compared to series wins over UCLA, Utah and Arizona in the past month, a loss to the Pilots should hopefully not hurt the Beavers standing in the national rankings too much, but you can never know for sure.

Let’s take a look at where those rankings stand heading into the end of the regular season. D1 Baseball is highest on the Beavers, placing them at 10, and the other major polls are a bit more bearish on the Beavs. The National College Baseball Writers Association has Oregon State down at 16, Baseball America has them at 17, and Collegiate Baseball has the team at 18. RPI is also not high on the Beavers, who are down at 31 in the latest tabulations.

So while D1 thinks the Beavers should host a regional, and maybe a superregional if things break right in the next couple weeks, the other outlets aren’t quite as optimistic on the Beavs. Baseball America has a full projection of the tournament field, and they have Oregon State travelling to Morgantown to take on 7 seed West Virginia.

There’s not a ton of time left in the season to solidify Oregon State’s position. While the rest of the Pac-12 will be playing each other in the final week of the season, the Beavers are welcoming Western Carolina to Corvallis for their final series of the year. No disrespect to the Catamounts, but even a series sweep might not move the needle much for the tournament committee.

After that, the Pac-12 Tournament looms, and there’s a chance there for the Beavers to burnish their record. Oregon State has been second highest ranked Pac-12 team in most of the polls for the last few weeks, but if they could knock off Stanford and take the Pac-12 crown that should definitely catch some attention.

The other thing that would help is if some of the teams ahead of the Beavers in the national rankings picked up a few losses. The best place to look for those is probably the SEC. The SEC has been the premier conference in college baseball for quite some time, and this season is no different. There has been a lot of parity in the conference this season, and if a few of the top teams beat up on each in the SEC tournament it could potentially open up a spot for the Beavers.

These last few weeks for the Beavers will be crucial. Where do you think they’ll end up in the postseason?