Buddie Completes First Year on NCAA Baseball Committee
6/2/2015 12:00:00 AM | Baseball
By Jay Garneau, Wake Forest Athletic Communications (@WakeBaseball)
As the NCAA baseball regionals come to a close, fans enjoyed an opening weekend which included a 20-inning contest, nine total extra-inning ballgames, 47 games decided by one or two runs, and a No. 4 seed and three No. 3 seeds advancing to super regionals.
One Demon Deacon had a particular hand in putting those contests together. Senior Associate Athletic Director for Administration/Development Mike Buddie served his first year on the NCAA Division I Baseball Committee.
As part of the selection committee, Buddie was one of 10 representatives responsible for composing the 64-team field for the 2015 NCAA Division I Baseball Championship.
"It is truly a grueling process. I remember looking at the itineraries of the committee and seeing we're meeting from 7:30 in the morning until midnight on Saturday and Sunday, and 7:30 in the morning until 9 on Monday morning just to make sure of everything," Buddie said. "I thought, 'how in the world are we going to need that much time to talk about 64 teams?' At the end of the day you're really talking about 80 teams, and then seeding, and bracketing, and we could have easily used another 10 hours. It was just a phenomenal process. I walked away thinking what great shape college baseball is in, because of that committee and the NCAA officials who are there, and how much they all care about getting it right. That was refreshing to me."
Buddie serves as the chair of the Atlantic Region, which includes the MEAC, Big South and Southern Conference in addition to the ACC, and as the vice-chair for the Mideast Region, including the Big Ten, Missouri Valley, Mid-American Conference and the Summit League. Throughout the regular season, he kept in touch with regional advisory committees, which includes head coaches from each conference, to learn about each team.
"They've seen a lot of the same teams that we're discussing, so those conference calls are really helpful. The closer we get to the end of the season, we try to get them to give us a feel for ranking the teams in our region," Buddie added. "The challenge for me, within the Atlantic Region for example, was where does Radford slot in? And where do you slide Coastal Carolina, and Liberty, because certainly, we play those teams, but not in conference play. So is Coastal Carolina behind three ACC teams and ahead of seven? Or behind seven and ahead of three? You rely on head-to-head competition, certainly, but at some point you've got to look at strength of schedules, who they've played, conference finish, who's playing well down the stretch."
For the committee, though, it's not all a numbers game.
"When we're in that war room, we have every piece of information we could possibly in terms of who they've played, their strength of schedule, their opponents' strength of schedule, non-conference strength of schedule, their record at home, their record on the road, their conference record - all of those things are on one screen. It's really well done the way the NCAA gets us that information. What it can't tell you is, Virginia for example, one of their better hitters missed the first 35 games of the year with an injury. That's significant, because when he came back they started playing better. You have to find those little details too, and that really falls on the regional advisory committees to know those types of details, because that can be the difference between being the 64th team and the 65th team, and that's a huge responsibility."
Buddie also explains that instead of there being arguments in the war room, it is 10 people working collectively towards a common goal.
"You're advocating to get the best 64 teams into the field. There's truly 10 people getting together, trying to make sure we get it right," he added. "While there's always going to be tough conversations, it's purely done keeping the student-athletes in mind. This year is a perfect example, there were 70 teams that I think deserved to have the chance to play this postseason. Just like you read about with the basketball committee every year, at some point, there's got to be a 65th team. When we watched the selection show, it's exciting to see everything get unveiled. There's also regret, that pit in your stomach about the two or three teams that didn't get in that you know will be the discussion at the national level. It's never easy to look at that 65th team, because after 72 hours of crunching numbers and having discussions and learning as much as you can, you can always take that 65 through 70 and make an argument why they should be in. At the end of the day, usually the 62 to 64 teams have a little bit of a stronger argument."
Other members of the committee include seven athletic directors, another senior associate athletic director and an associate conference commissioner. After starting the year 19-10, Wake Forest was in the early mix for an at-large bid, but the Demon Deacons finished 27-26 and fell out of tournament talks.
"I sat with an athletic director during deliberations. He had to keep getting up and leaving the room because we had to talk about their team, or national seeding, because they were in those conversations and he can't be involved," Buddie said. "I kept thinking, 'Won't it be nice when I have to get up and leave the room when we're discussing Wake Forest for a national seed?' I'm looking forward to having our program back in those discussions. But for my first year on the committee, it was nice that I never had to leave the room, I could sit in and listen to all the conversations even if I wasn't involved, just to hear everything and learn as much as I could."