Alabama Softball’s No. 8 seed is a Selection Committee fail

Crimson Tide fans and softball pundits were shocked Sunday night when Alabama Softball was announced as the 8th-seed nationally for the NCAA Softball Championship.

The placement not only disrespects the body of work Alabama Softball put into this season but also reveals the hand of the selection committee’s priorities.

Many of the talking heads of softball had Alabama in the third seed, maybe even No. 2, giving them a secure regional and super regional hosting privileges. The NCAA then announced the regular-season SEC champions were given the No. 8 seed to host a regional and be one of the last seeds that will host a super regional should they move on. The full bracket and seed lineup can be found here.

A No. 8 seed is a joke and an insult to the season accomplishments of Alabama softball. Let’s review the resume.

The case for Alabama

Alabama Softball finished the season as the regular-season SEC champions. Not only that, Alabama did so by four games over the second-place team (Tennessee). They swept Georgia and Missouri at home and swept LSU and Florida on the road. They took two from Texas A&M and Mississippi State while dropping the regular season series to Kentucky and South Carolina.

If you factor in SEC Tournament performance, Alabama evened up the series 2-2 against No. 16 seed Kentucky (that includes a 13-inning loss by 1) and a 3-1 series edge over the eventual SEC Champion Florida. Florida was given the No. 5 seed overall by the committee.

Is this starting to sound like a highway robbery? Because it gets worse.

Outside of the conference, Alabama was undefeated. Not only that, but it beat both Arizona and Minnesota. Alabama beat Arizona 6-1 and also beat Minnesota twice, all within a week. Arizona finished third in the PAC-12 behind Washington and UCLA. Minnesota finished second in the Big 10 regular season and fell to Michigan in the conference championship game.

All of this to say that Alabama was not given the treasures it deserved for the season it put out. It deserved a higher seed. It deserved playing a lower-seeded team coming out of regionals. Instead, it barely gets a super regional.

Where the selection committee placed Alabama showed the true nature of the process.

The RPI is what matters

Alabama was ranked in the top ten for most of the season in the USA Today Coaches poll. However, the RPI placed Alabama 8th at the end of the season. It certainly seemed like Alabama and a lot of the teams were placed on or somewhere close to their RPI ranking.

What Alabama’s seed and many other’s show is that your season performance doesn’t fully matter. It doesn’t matter what your accomplishments were compared to other teams in your conference. The only thing is matters is record against the strength of schedule. In other words, RPI.

If the RPI is what truly matters, then may I suggest we replace the committee with computers? If everything we are basing the field selection on is a series of numbers and records, what’s the point of having a committee to discuss it.

Patrick Murphy will use the snub as motivation. Even without his urging, this team will be on a mission to prove the committee wrong.