National Notes | Perfect Game Top 25 | Video Vault



Time flies when you're having fun and this past Monday was exactly six weeks from Selection Monday. As unbelievable as that may be, we need to get busy picking our Field of 64. Here we go…



There are four subsets of teams that must be addressed and only one of these groups gets decided solely based on what happens on the field. The four sets of teams, with some overlap, are as follows:



• 31 automatic bids

• 33 at-large bids

• 8 Top 8 National Seeds

• 8 additional host sites for the Regional round



For the decisions we need to make in this exercise, we will combine current standings and team resumes with some projection and forecasting. Let's start with the 31 automatic bids.





Automatic Bids



America East: Hartford

American: East Carolina

Atlantic 10: VCU

ACC: Miami

Atlantic Sun: Jacksonville



Big 12: Texas Tech

Big East: Creighton

Big South: Coastal Carolina

Big Ten: Michigan State

Big West: UC Santa Barbara



Colonial: UNC Wilimington

Conference USA: Rice

Horizon: Wright State

Ivy: Princeton

MAAC: Monmouth



MAC: Ball State

MEAC: Florida A&M

Missouri Valley: Dallas Baptist

Mountain West: New Mexico

NEC: Bryant



Ohio Valley: Southeast Missouri

Pac-12: California

Patriot: Navy

SEC: Florida

Southern: UNC Greensboro



Southland: Lamar

SWAC: Alabama State

Summit: Oral Roberts

Sun Belt: South Alabama

West Coast: St. Mary's



WAC: Seattle



Here are your Top 8 National Seeds and eight additional Regional Hosts. That makes 16 teams in total and those teams who are currently listed as automatic qualifiers will be in BOLD. This is critical because those BOLD teams will not count against the 33 available at-large bids.





Top 8 National Seeds

Remember: the order here is irrelevant long-term. There is no reward for being a higher seeded National Seed. The sole prize is hosting both a Regional and Super Regional. So in essence, you are either a Top 8 National Seed or you are not, period.



1. Florida

2. Miami

3. Texas A&M

4. Florida State

5. South Carolina

6. Louisville

7. UC Santa Barbara

8. Texas Tech





Additional Eight Hosts

There are 16 hosts in the Regional round.



• Ole Miss

• NC State

• Vanderbilt

• Mississippi State

• South Alabama

• Coastal Carolina

• Louisiana State

• Texas Christian





Let's take inventory: Six of the 16 host schools are automatic qualifiers. So, that means that 10 at-large bids have been awarded to host teams. Since we started with 33 at-large bids, that means we have 23 left to award. Here are those 23 teams with their current RPI listed in parentheses.



Clemson (10)

North Carolina (14)

Louisiana-Lafayette (15)

Southern Miss (19)

Florida Atlantic (22)



Kentucky (23)

Georgia Tech (24)

Oklahoma State (27)

Minnesota (21)

Michigan (28)



College of Charleston (29)

Virginia (36)

BYU (38)

Maryland (37)

Oregon State (40)



Notre Dame (42)

Gonzaga (44)

Alabama (45)

Cal State Fullerton (46)

Long Beach State (53)



Arizona (54)

Fresno State (60)

Tulane (63)





On the bubble



Old Dominion

Wake Forest

Duke

Washington

McNeese State



Southeastern Louisiana

Stanford





Postseason teams by Conference



SEC: 9

ACC: 9

Big Ten: 4

Big 12: 3

Big West: 3

Conference USA: 3

Pac-12: 3

West Coast: 3

American Athletic: 2

Mountain West: 2

Sun Belt: 2

All others (21): 1





