Mizzou baseball left out of NCAA tourney field

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BRANSON MO NEWS: For the sixth straight season the Missouri baseball team will stay home for the NCAA postseason. The Tigers, 34-22 under second-year coach Steve Bieser, posted a respectable spot in the Ratings Percentage Index rankings most of the regular season but finished just 12-18 in Southeastern Conference regular-season games and slipped to No. 48 in the RPI after losing its first game in the SEC tournament. Mizzou posted series wins over three SEC teams that made the SEC field in Auburn, Mississippi State and Vanderbilt, but losing two of three to lowly Alabama was especially costly for the Tigers, along with a pair of one-run losses to Kentucky. The Tigers were 36-23 last year in Bieser’s first season and also missed the NCAA field.It’s the longest NCAA regional drought for Mizzou since it missed the tournament every year from 1997-2003. The Tigers then went on a seven-year streak with a regional appearance every season from 2003-09. MU earned an automatic NCAA berth in 2012 for winning the Big 12 tournament.

Mizzou was not among the first four teams left off the bracket by the selection committee. Those four were Arizona (RPI No. 46), Illinois (N0. 47), Kentucky (No. 32) and Central Florida (No. 43).Kentucky might be the most controversial omission. The Wildcats were just 13-17 in SEC play — one game better than Mizzou in the league standings — but won SEC series against NCAA regional teams Auburn, South Carolina and Georgia. The Wildcats also lost SEC series to the league’s two worst teams, going 2-4 against Alabama and Tennessee, the two teams that didn’t make the 12-team SEC tournament.During the selection show on ESPNU, South Carolina athletics director Ray Tanner, the tournament selection committee chair, noted that conference record was a major factor in deciding the fields.

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