2024 Baseball Tournament

[Falconwriter]

This is exactly why I hate, loathe and despise the format where you IGNORE a team winning a conference title over the course of four months -- only to hand the NCAA bid to another team because they get hot.

In a P-5 conference, it doesn't matter because the regular season winner will probably get an at-large bid, anyway. In the MAC, that doesn't happen. So why the ever-loving Hell does the conference do it this way? It's the same in basketball. You basically punish a team for being consistently better than everyone else over the course of months.

If BG wins this tourney it will be a flat out miracle -- and I don't expect it to happen. I hope I'm wrong, but in all my years of following BG sports, most of the time Falcon teams don't win these things. Hell, the basketball program has been trying to do it for more than 50 years without success.

['92Falcon]

This is exactly why I hate, loathe and despise the format where you IGNORE a team winning a conference title over the course of four months -- only to hand the NCAA bid to another team because they get hot.

In a P-5 conference, it doesn't matter because the regular season winner will probably get an at-large bid, anyway. In the MAC, that doesn't happen. So why the ever-loving Hell does the conference do it this way? It's the same in basketball. You basically punish a team for being consistently better than everyone else over the course of months.

If BG wins this tourney it will be a flat out miracle -- and I don't expect it to happen. I hope I'm wrong, but in all my years of following BG sports, most of the time Falcon teams don't win these things. Hell, the basketball program has been trying to do it for more than 50 years without success.

While I get the P5 automatic bid versus the 1 bid rest of the world, I don't agree with the rest of your comments. We won the MAC regular season which is great. Now we are given the change to get into the NCAAs. To do that, you have to prove your the best.

I've watched each BG/WMU game this year. WMU is better than us, period. They have OWNED us and haven't recently been hot. They have won over 30 games just like BG. Right now, they deserve to go to the NCAA and would better represent the MAC.

It is all right here in front of us today. Prove your the best, BG Baseball!

AY ZIGGY

[fanatic13]

Tough end to the season but regardless it was a historic season. There's a lot of talent on this team and hopefully that sticks together next season. Very proud of the bounce back this program has had

[Falconwriter]

We'll have to agree to disagree. Programs at schools like BG don't typically have the depth of talent that larger schools do, and going through the grind of a regular season takes a toll. So forcing the winning school to then beat everybody all over again, but on a much shorter timeframe, in order to get an NCAA bid is just ridiculous.

It only punishes the team that was most consistently good over a period of months.

Sadly, this group will go down as MAC regular season champs but never get to experience an NCAA tournament.

Despite the bad ending, I am very proud of this team and how the program has managed to come back from the depths of the Hell that was created 4 years ago when the university tried to end baseball altogether. And I'm particularly proud of the young man who received the scholarship I created 7 years ago. It's not my place to name him, but he had an excellent year and was a major contributor to the MAC title.

[Falconwriter]

This is exactly why I hate, loathe and despise the format where you IGNORE a team winning a conference title over the course of four months -- only to hand the NCAA bid to another team because they get hot.

In a P-5 conference, it doesn't matter because the regular season winner will probably get an at-large bid, anyway. In the MAC, that doesn't happen. So why the ever-loving Hell does the conference do it this way? It's the same in basketball. You basically punish a team for being consistently better than everyone else over the course of months.

If BG wins this tourney it will be a flat out miracle -- and I don't expect it to happen. I hope I'm wrong, but in all my years of following BG sports, most of the time Falcon teams don't win these things. Hell, the basketball program has been trying to do it for more than 50 years without success.

While I get the P5 automatic bid versus the 1 bid rest of the world, I don't agree with the rest of your comments. We won the MAC regular season which is great. Now we are given the change to get into the NCAAs. To do that, you have to prove your the best.

I've watched each BG/WMU game this year. WMU is better than us, period. They have OWNED us and haven't recently been hot. They have won over 30 games just like BG. Right now, they deserve to go to the NCAA and would better represent the MAC.

It is all right here in front of us today. Prove your the best, BG Baseball!

AY ZIGGY

Just so you know, I went back and looked at the regular season champions vs. tournament champions to see how the regular season champion typically fares in the tournament. Excluding years where division champions (East vs West) decided the title, the regular season champion record in 27 tournaments is 10 wins and 17 losses.

As I said, it's very hard for mid major programs to do this type of double win, and it's clear to me that the tournament does nothing but hurt teams that persevere over months to win the regular season crown.

[fanatic13]

Sometimes the format helps sometimes it hurts. If you take the regular season champion the Mac season might as well have been over after 18 games. In volleyball this year the Mac was almost a 2 bid league with bg losing in the finals in 5 sets to a 30-1 western Michigan team. Took bg most of the season to recover from losing the Mac player of the year but they clearly deserved a shot.

I think they could redo the format because teams playing 3 to 6 games is completely different from the regular season format. I like how the acc does 4 pools of 3 with a round robin. If it's a 3 way tie the best seed gets tiebreaker then they do a 4 team single elimination. Mac could do something similar so each team plays 3 or 4 games. We could do 2 pools of 3 or 3 pools of 3 with a wildcard advancing. Regardless I think western is playing the best and wins

[TommyG]

Great season…funny how this program gets the least support of any of our men’s sports from the department, yet it accomplishes more championships by far. Maybe give them support…turf the field and get them back to a full scholarship allotment.
Bottom line, they need to pitch better if they want to win a tournament. It’s not easy, but we didn’t have much consistency on the mound.
The tournament is a great thing for the conference and players. When it was 8 teams… straight double elimination I’d argue it wasn’t a great way to decide the champion. With the 6 teams and the bye for the top 2 seeds, I think it’s pretty fair.
BG didn’t play well enough…had a big injury to their best player and they weren’t able to overcome it. Still it was an awesome season. Hopefully they can keep the momentum going.

[Falconwriter]

Great season…funny how this program gets the least support of any of our men’s sports from the department, yet it accomplishes more championships by far. Maybe give them support…turf the field and get them back to a full scholarship allotment.
Bottom line, they need to pitch better if they want to win a tournament. It’s not easy, but we didn’t have much consistency on the mound.
The tournament is a great thing for the conference and players. When it was 8 teams… straight double elimination I’d argue it wasn’t a great way to decide the champion. With the 6 teams and the bye for the top 2 seeds, I think it’s pretty fair.
BG didn’t play well enough…had a big injury to their best player and they weren’t able to overcome it. Still it was an awesome season. Hopefully they can keep the momentum going.

I'm pretty sure BG baseball has not had a full scholarship allotment in decades -- if ever. When I created my baseball scholarship 7 years ago, there were only 3 others on the books (I believe), which gave BG a total of 4. I'm not sure what the total is now. The maximum allowed by the NCAA is 11.7. That's why the scholarships are divided up, and the maximum number of players who can get any kind of scholarship is 27 out of a roster of up to 39 players. Of course, if a school has NIL money, they can now use that to pay baseball players who might not otherwise get scholarship money.

[TommyG]

They had full scholarships until after 2010 season. Had 1/3rd of their scholarship $ cut by Christopher in the fall of 2009 and told they had a year to be under. They had won back to back conference titles in 08 and 09.
Christopher wanted to up the football budget…his original plan to cut hockey didn’t work…then the “Bring Back the Glory campaign” didn’t raise 20% of their goal.

He didn’t hire Danny Schmitz, so he literally didn’t care if he was successful or not. Baseball got the shaft.

[footballguy51]

With Title IX, if you increase baseball scholarships, then you have to take them away from some other men’s sport since there probably isn’t money to add scholarships to women’s sports to compensate.

[TommyG]

Not the way Title IX works…they could increase the baseball scholarships if they wanted to. Yes they would have to make some type of improvement to funding of women’s athletics, but it isn’t a dollar for dollar tally you need to meet in terms of scholarships.

Bottom line…BGSU has done nothing for this program except take stuff away. Time for them to invest in the program…

[Falconfreak90]

Tough ending to a great season but WMU is totally legit. They were the best team in the tourney by far. I agree the regular season title should mean more.

We'll be back...bank on that.