Greg Hansen: NCAA committee correctly recognized that red-hot Wildcats belong in field of 64

Some loudmouths in the college baseball community have charged the NCAA selection committee with a mix of misdeeds, conspiracy and ineptitude, declaring the 10-man panel to be a group of bunglers who committed the high crime of selecting Arizona instead of USC and UC Irvine.

No surprise there. That’s Bracketology 101, where the first rule is often to concentrate on what went wrong instead of what went right.

The critics ignored three facts:

1. USC’s non-conference strength of schedule was ranked No. 143 in college baseball (and the Trojans went 1-2 against Arizona)..

2. UC Irvine played just one game against Quad 1 opponents (and the Anteaters went 0-1 against Arizona).

3. When the committee met to make its final selections over the weekend, Arizona had become The Team Nobody Wanted to Play.

After beating Arizona 5-4 in the finals of the Pac-12 Tournament, Oregon coach Mark Wasikowski said: “I can tell you this much: If I’m hanging around the SEC or anywhere else, I don’t want Arizona rolling into my yard.’’

John Cohen, athletic director at Auburn and chairman of the selection committee, was so impressed by Arizona’s 10-game finish that he and the committee surely realized the Wildcats’ late-season thunder was too impressive to ignore.

You don’t have to be an expert in analytics or be a first cousin to basketball metrics master Ken Pomeroy to see that Arizona is one of the nation’s 25 best teams. Leaving the Wildcats out of the field of 64 would’ve been irresponsible.

This was one time the eye test was a better gauge than RPI or SOS or, as No. 4 seed Clemson coach Eric Bakich said, “To be honest, the whole thing is a little confusing to me.’’

One thing the NCAA got right this season was to populate its baseball selection committee with qualified personnel. Cohen and his nine assistants couldn’t have been more baseball savvy.

Cohen is the former head baseball coach at Kentucky and Mississippi State.

Army AD Mike Buddie is a former pitcher for the New York Yankees.

Southeast Louisiana AD Jay Artigues is the former head baseball coach at that school.

Eastern Michigan AD Scott Wetherbee played college baseball at Ferris State.

Indiana State AD Sherard Clinkscales was a first-round draft pick of the Kansas City Royals.

Coastal Carolina AD Matt Hogue was a longtime baseball play-by-play radio announcer.

Even Utah AD Mark Harlan, the Pac-12 representative on the selection committee, grew up steeped in baseball; he was best friends with former Arizona pitcher Rich Tomey. In fact, Harlan played on a Tucson summer-league baseball team with Tomey and six or seven former Arizona Wildcats, including New Mexico coach Tod Brown.

These weren’t geometry professors fueled by computer printouts to determine if Arizona was better than Arizona State or UC Irvine.

These were baseball men who trusted their well-endowed baseball backgrounds.

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This isn’t unprecedented. In 1987. Arizona was included in the field of 64 — a team captained by current UA coach Chip Hale — after going 13-17 in the Pac-10. In 2010, two years before Andy Lopez’s Wildcats won the national championship, the Wildcats went 12-15 in the Pac-10 — seventh place — and were included in the field of 64.

When you are one of the five or 10 leading college baseball franchises of the last 70 years, as Arizona is, the blueblood carries weight. No fluke here.

Sure, Arizona’s pitching staff doesn’t have a stopper or a reliable starter..

But the UA’s offense is so potent, so dynamic, that about all you need to do to convince the doubters that Arizona is a legit member of the field of 64 is to list the batting averages, home runs and RBIs of Hale’s seven leading hitters:

Chase Davis: 21-74, .369

Kiko Romero: 19-86, .347

Tony Bullard: 12-42, 335

Mac Bingham: 10-51, .369

Emilio Corona: 10-43, 333

Nic McClaughry: 4-39, .336

Mason White: 8-32, .310

No wonder Arizona had such a robust May that it beat Pac-12 champion Stanford 21-20 and 14-4, outscored the league’s No. 1 baseball program, Oregon State, 13-12, and ended the postseason hopes of USC and ASU by beating the Trojans 13-4 and Sun Devils 12-3.

It’s called saving your best for last.

In my research of the UA record books, I determined that only two Arizona offenses across the last 50 years can match or exceed this year’s club. In 1974, Jerry Kindall’s 58-6 team hit .352 with a still-standing school record of 700 runs.

And in 1993, Kindall’s Wildcats hit a school-record 115 home runs while batting .343.

Neither team made it to Omaha, but they left a legacy that the 2023 Wildcats carried forward this season, taking their long-ball game all the way to the NCAA regionals in Fayetteville, Arkansas.