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From Baseball insider

http://collegebaseballinsider.com/

"Point of Contention

Mississippi State in, LSU, Wake Forest out

By Sean Ryan

It's that time of year when the college baseball world is abuzz. While most normal people are enjoying a Memorial Day at the beach or visiting relatives or getting fat after three straight nights of hot dogs and hamburgers, college baseball fans were gathering around the TV to find out which 64 teams would begin their journey to the College World Series.

Some big names might want to stay at the BBQ table.

With the pairings now settled for about 30 minutes, the big surprise was that LSU and Wake Forest were left out, while Mississippi State made it in. The task of selecting the final at-large teams never is easy. In fact, when we at CollegeBaseballInsider.com went through our projections, we had the feeling that you could take about 10-15 teams, put them in a hat, pull them out and award them the last five at-large bids. If you didn't like them, you could pull out five others and justify that those teams deserved to go.

On the whole, the NCAA committee fared quite well. On the positive side, getting San Francisco in the mix was the right thing. The Dons narrowly missed last year, but after battling Pepperdine toe-to-toe for most of the year, the Dons will be making their first NCAA appearance. Jacksonville likely also was one of the last teams in, but the Dolphins deserved a shot after winning the Atlantic Sun regular-season title.

The biggest complaint stems from the committee's inclusion of Mississippi State. A few years ago, we vented about Florida making the NCAA tourney despite not making the SEC tourney. That Gators team had a RPI of 32 and a record of 34-19-1. MSU missed out on the SEC tourney after a scalding start, is 35-21 and has a RPI of 34. Eerie.

But as we didn't understand a few years ago, why choose the Bulldogs over, say, LSU. The Tigers finished 35-24 with a RPI of 37 - and qualified for the SEC tourney.

Did it come down to MSU taking two of three from LSU at Alex Box Stadium in late March, the last game being a 7-6 win in 10 innings? Committee Chairman Larry Templeton said that it didn't come down to MSU and LSU in the war room, but he did mention the Tigers' struggles down the stretch. The Tigers went 9-8 since April 26. Their win over top-seeded Alabama in the first round of the SEC tourney couldn't make up for series losses to Vanderbilt and Florida in that stretch.

What about the Bulldogs' struggles down the stretch? MSU went 6-11 after April 23, losing SEC series to South Carolina, Kentucky (swept) and Ole Miss and winning two of three against Florida.

We don't get it.

We also wonder what happened to Wake Forest. We hear of the RPI meaning so much, yet the Demon Deacons were left home with a RPI of 25. We weren't 100 percent on the Deacs. As we discussed in our final projections, Wake hurt itself by dropping two straight games in the ACC tourney. It nabbed early-season wins over Florida and Missouri, who were expected to be Top 20 teams but fizzled a bit over the course of the year. What hurt the Deacs the most and put them on the bubble was the fact that they went 5-12 against the other seven ACC schools that made the field . Wake feasted on Boston College, Virginia Tech, Duke and Maryland to the tune of 11-1. We kind of felt the Demon Deacons deserved to be there.

So, who would we take out?

We've vented enough about Mississippi State, but Wake could have gone there.

We don't know that we'd take anyone else out, per se. As we said, the committee could have taken a handful of other teams, and we'd likely be cool with the selections. Still, there are others who should feel fortunate.

San Diego (32-23) had a RPI of 53 on Sunday and 57 on Monday, thanks in part to sweeping Texas the first weekend of the season. The Toreros may have benefited from a few West Coast teams being snubbed of late (Cal Poly and San Francisco last year). But there's no real problem here. Wichita State had 44 wins and a RPI of 45, so the Shockers were right there. And Missouri (31-25), whose RPI jumped to 48. The Tigers finished strong by winning 11 of 15 down the stretch - including three against Texas (maybe that's the barometer) - and were the first team we had on the outside looking in after long discussions.

And who else could have gone?

We thought Long Beach State had a shot, despite a 29-25 record. The Dirtbags owned a RPI of 47 and played the fourth-toughest schedule in the country. Missouri State finished second in the Missouri Valley Conference and second in the league tourney but missed the field, possibly losing its spot to Wichita State, which swept the Bears. Then, you have some quality teams not from the traditional power conferences: Old Dominion, East Carolina, Louisiana-Lafayette, Kent State, James Madison and Connecticut. They all likely were discussed at length. Yet, all failed to get the call."