Baseball Bracketology: Cowboys No Longer Projected to Host

Only one regular season series remains for the Oklahoma State Cowboys. They’ll welcome the Texas Tech Red Raiders to Stillwater for a three-game Thursday through Saturday series with the Big 12 crown on the line.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that after back-to-back series losses to Iowa and Baylor, OSU is no longer projected to host a regional.

D1Baseball – 2 seed | Clemson Regional
College Sports Madness – 2 seed | College Station Regional

D1Baseball has Indiana and Yale joining the Cowboys at Clemson, while College Sports Madness has OSU joining Houston and Sam Houston State at Texas A&M.

While it’s disappointing, the Pokes can still bolster their case. As has been previously pointed out, if OSU is able to win the Big 12 regular season, they will likely end up hosting a regional.

The Cowboys currently sit at No. 22 in the RPI. Winning at least two of three against the Red Raiders — who have an RPI of 9 — would only improve the Cowboys’ standing. Not to mention, winning two of three guarantees OSU the Big 12 crown.

By the way, there are two scenarios for OSU winning the Big 12:

OSU wins two games against Texas Tech
OSU wins one game against Texas Tech | Texas loses one game to TCU

That’s it. Those are the scenarios. To host though, you’d probably rather win the league outright and the final series of the season, than hobble into the Big 12 tournament losers of your final three series.

To be perfectly safe, it would be good for the Cowboys to also have a solid showing in the Big 12 tournament next week to go along with a Big 12 regular season title.

There’s a lot on the line this weekend in Allie P., but I think that’s exactly the way this team and Josh Holliday like it.