Why NC State baseball was snubbed by the NCAA selection committee

N.C. State baseball coach Elliot Avent said after an ACC Tournament win over Wake Forest last week that his team had done enough to make the NCAA Tournament.

The Wolfpack (36-21) won three games after defeating the Demon Deacons, advancing to the ACC title game before falling 9-5 to UNC.

“I definitely think we’ve done enough to be in the NCAA Tournament,” said Avent, who watched his team come back from a 4-0 deficit to beat the sixth-seeded Demon Deacons and eliminate them from semifinal contention. “I had thought we were already in, but obviously you never know.”

His last five words rang true on Monday as his team found itself on the outside looking in at the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2014.

N.C. State’s baseball social media account tweeted one word — “criminal” — after the Pack was left out of the tournament. The snub comes a year after the NCAA removed N.C. State from the College World Series because of a COVID-19 outbreak within the program.

NC State’s Tommy White wipes his face during the first inning in an NCAA college baseball game against North Carolina at the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament final Sunday, May 29, 2022, in Charlotte, N.C.

Mike Buddie, the NCAA Division I Baseball Committee Chair and Athletic Director at Army, attempted to explain the decision during Monday’s selection special on ESPN2.

“N.C. State, that was a brutal one,” Buddie said on the ESPN broadcast. “It was minuscule differences but when it gets down to that time of the selection, a minuscule difference can sometimes make the difference.”

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According to Buddie, N.C. State’s weak nonconference schedule coupled with a losing record in its ACC regular-season series kept the Wolfpack out of the field of 64.

They won four of their 10 ACC series this season with only one coming against a team selected to the NCAA Tournament. Nine ACC teams — Florida St., Georgia Tech, Louisville, Miami (FL), North Carolina, Notre Dame, Virginia, Virginia Tech, Wake Forest — will participate in the NCAA Division I Baseball Championship.

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N.C. State, which is 4-2 against the top eight teams in the NCAA Tournament, was listed as the first of the first four teams out by the NCAA selection committee despite finishing with an RPI of 33 and as the ACC Tournament runner-ups.

Buddie added that the Wolfpack was competing with Ole Miss (32-22) for one of the final at-large spots but the Rebels’ series wins over LSU and Auburn propelled them over N.C. State.

David Thompson is an award-winning reporter for the USA Today Network covering NC State and Duke athletics. He can be reached at dthompson1@gannett.com, at 828-231-1747, or on Twitter at @daveth89.

This article originally appeared on The Fayetteville Observer: Why NC State baseball was snubbed for 2022 NCAA Tournament