Now in his 16th season as the Tigers’ skipper, Jamieson can take comfort in knowing he’s earned the right to return for No. 17 next year. Otherwise, that about does it for comfort here lately. Scattered injuries, inexperience and uncharacteristic struggles on the mound have contributed to a rare rocky season for what might have been the school’s most consistently excellent team in recent years.
But after seven straight years of 35 wins or more, the Tigers are just 24-22 with two weekend series left in the regular season. With an RPI of No. 98, it goes without saying that Missouri’s chances of qualifying for an eighth consecutive NCAA Regional have been circling the drain for months.
■ Missouri, currently with a 24-22 record, needs to go 2-4 against NU and UT in order to avoid finishing with a losing record for the first time since 2002 (24-29; 9-16, 9th in Big 12; one of only 2 losing seasons under Tim Jamieson)
■ The Nitty Gritty Report for 2010 NCAA College Men's Baseball (warrennolan.com) shows positives and negatives for each D-1 team's postseason outlook. He has Mizzou ranked 98th in RPI, and nothing but black marks (negatives) on the various statistics categories.
■ The Boyd's World RPI Needs Report doesn't look good for the Tigers either. In fact, Missouri has disappeared from the list of potential Regional bids altogether. Boyd also has MU ranked 98th in RPI and 88th in ISR. the official NCAA RPI rankings show MU at 98th.
■ Baseball America's Week 12 Stock Report lists teams that are solidly in the Regionals, on the bubble (in) and on the bubble (out). Missouri comes up in the discussion only here:
Kansas moves back into the field of 64 after sweeping Missouri. The Jayhawks still are just 56th in the RPI, but Boyd's says a 4-3 finish will boost them into the top 45 (at-large territory). That would mean at least one series win against Kansas State or Oklahoma over the final two weeks, which would also improve Kansas in the Big 12 standings. The Jayhawks remains on very precarious ground, but they needed to sweep Missouri to get back into position to earn an at-large bid, and they did just that.
■ From the opinionators at Tigerboard.com:
• It's all going terribly, terribly wrong...
• What I think it comes down to is the expectations coming in to the year. There were very few, if any, that though we had a good chance at competing for a Big 12 title this year. We knew we had a lot of new faces coming in and that we would experience some growing pains. Although it hurts to watch the team struggle, ultimately, I think this season has ended up just like most people thought it would.
• Sometimes seasons don't go according to plan. . . I chalk this season up to just simply being "one of those years"...nothing went right.
• The BEST part is that a group of freshmen, now know what to expect. They will be bigger, stronger, and most importantly SMARTER next year.
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