Arizona baseball climbs onto NCAA tournament bubble entering final week of season

It’s not just the computers that have noticed the late-season push by the Arizona Wildcats to get into the postseason. One of the major outlets that covers college baseball has caught wind of the surge, too.

The latest projection by D1Baseball.com has Arizona among the ‘first five out’ of the 64-team NCAA tournament field, ranking the Wildcats 69th—nice?—overall.

Arizona (29-24) sits 47^th in the RPI rankings, which is down two spots since the week due to losses by Oregon and Houston, but it’s still way above where it sat when May began. The Wildcats were 75^th just two weeks ago and dipped to 78^th after the May 7 home loss to Arizona State, but since then they have run off seven consecutive wins including a weekend sweep at Penn State.

Arizona finishes the regular season with a Thursday-Saturday series at Pac-12 doormat Washington State (11-39-1, 3-23-1). Another sweep would give the Wildcats a 15-14 league record, an achievement that would further bolster their NCAA resume.

Last year the Wildcats finished 48^th in the RPI with a 34-22 record, though its 14-16 mark in the Pac-12 likely played a big factor in getting snubbed. Their current ranking of 47^th is higher than three of the other teams D1Baseball listed as ‘first five out,’ as well as one spot better than Michigan, which is currently considered the third-to-last team in the tourney field.

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