One blown call: How SHSU's baseball team saw its Super Regional odds go from a safe bet to virtually no chance in 20 minutes

I’ve known Jason Barfield for almost 20 years. We’ve watched hundreds of games together all over the country, including an untold number of Sam Houston State football, basketball and baseball games and other athletic contests. We’ve been broadcast partners in the past, and since moving in 2006, I’ve enjoyed listening to my good friend provide play-by-play coverage of SHSU athletics.

Barfield would readily, and proudly, admit to being a Bearkat homer on occasion. He’s not afraid to express his displeasure with the decision of a referee or umpire. But something was different Sunday at 2:10 a.m. as he called the action of SHSU’s epic NCAA tournament regional game against TCU.  When second base umpire Jeff Head called Luke Plucheck for runner’s interference in the bottom of the 21st inning, and in the process took away the game-winning run from the Bearkats, the tone of Barfield’s voice was filled with something heavier than outrage, anger or frustration. Bad decisions by an umpire or referee are a part of every sport, but this was more than just an ordinary mistake.

To be fair, Head’s call did not cause SHSU to lose the game. Full credit should be given to TCU for manufacturing a run in the top half of the 22nd inning to take a 3-2 lead. When the Bearkats could not answer, the Horned Frogs walked away winners in the second longest NCAA tournament baseball game ever played.

The controversial call did not cause the Bearkats to lose, but it did, for a fact, take away a victory that was important — almost essential — to their chances of winning the regional, advancing for the first time ever to a Super Regional and possibly even more.

So, how important is it to start 2-0 in regional play? Let's take a look at NCAA Tournament regional results from 2010 through 2014. (That's five of the 16 years in which the NCAA has used this current format. I'm not a math major, but I think a 31.25 percent sample size would be considered statistically significant.)

How many teams, regardless of their seed, started 2-0 and won their regional?  
There have been 80 regional tournaments played from 2010-2014. Teams that started 2-0, regardless of their seed, have gone on to win 65 times, meaning a team has an 81.25% chance of advancing to the Super Regional if it starts 2-0.

Since 2010, of the 65 teams that started 2-0 and won their regional...
— 51 finished with a 3-0 record (78.5%)
— 41 of the 51 teams that finished 3-0 were No. 1 seeds.
— 14 teams started 2-0 and were pushed to a "Monday" winner-take-all game, but still won the regional (21.5%).
— Of the 14 teams pushed to a "Monday" winner-take-all game, seven were No. 1 seeds, meaning 41 out of 48 No. 1 seeds that started 2-0 and won their regional did it with a 3-0 record (85.4%)

(Interesting note: In 2013, every single team that won a regional started 2-0, including 14 of the 16 No. 1 seeds along with two No. 2 seeds. A total of 12 teams won their regional with a 3-0 record.)  

Based on their seed, how did teams that started 2-0 finish in their regional? 
— No. 1 seeds started 2-0 53 times, and won their regional 48 times (90.6%).*
— No. 2 seeds started 2-0 14 times, and won their regional 8 times (57.1%).
— No. 3 seeds started 2-0 11 times, and won their regional 8 times (72.7%).
— No. 4 seeds started 2-0 two times, and won their regional one time (College of Charleston in 2014).

* — Since 2010 only five out of 53 No. 1 seeds have lost their regional after a 2-0 start (9.4%): LSU to No. 2 Houston in 2014, Indiana to No. 3 Stanford in 2014, Clemson to No. 2 UConn in 2011, Georgia Tech to No. 2 Alabama in 2010, and Louisville to No. 2 Vanderbilt in 2010.  

How did lower seeds (2, 3, 4) that started 2-0 fare in the championship round vs. No. 1 seeds? 
— The No. 2, 3 and 4 seeds have collectively gone 2-0 at 27 regional tournaments over the past five seasons, and those teams have gone on to win their regional 17 times (63%).
— Lower seeds played a No. 1 seed from the loser's bracket 11 times in the championship round, and won six times (54.5%).

Which seeds were able to come back from the losers bracket to win their regional? 
Since 2010, 15 teams have come from the loser's bracket win a regional. That's a total of just 18.75% of all regional winners over the past five years, or about three each season that come through the loser's bracket.
— No. 1 seeds have done it six times.
— No. 2 seeds have done it six times.
— No. 3 seeds have done it two times (Stanford vs. No. 1 Indiana in 2014; Cal vs. No. 2 Baylor in 2011).
— No. 4 seeds have done it one time (Stony Brook vs. No. 2 Central Florida in 2012).

That’s a lot of number crunching to prove some things most college baseball fans already knew, but with a shocking level of statistical certainty to back it up.
— Teams that start 2-0, regardless of their seed, win more than 80% of the regional tournaments, and the "lower" seeds who do it win most of the time as well even when they have to face the No. 1 seed in the championship round.
—When a No. 1 seeds starts 2-0, forget about it. They almost always win the regional (90.6%), and they usual do it by going undefeated.
— In the past five years, less than 20 percent of the regional tournaments (15 of 80) were won by a team that started 1-1. It’s hard for the No. 1 and No. 2 seeds to pull off the five-games-in-four-days comeback, and virtually impossible for the No. 3 and No. 4 seeds to do it.
— Only once in the past five seasons (Stanford vs. Indiana in 2014) has a No. 3 seed come through the loser's bracket to knock off a No. 1 seed that started 2-0.

Yes, the Bearkats were going to have to find some offense. It’s hard to believe they would have knocked off TCU in the championship round while averaging less than one run every nine innings. But TCU would have faced its own set of challenges — returning to the field on virtually no rest to play Sienna in the heat of the day, using more pitching and expending what little energy they had before turning around 90 minutes later to play a well-rested and supremely confident SHSU squad. Even if TCU pushed the series to a Monday winner-take-all final game, history indicates the Bearkats would have had a better than 50-50 chance of coming out on top.

For a brief moment Sunday at 2:10 a.m., as the Kats were storming the field in celebration with what they thought was a 2-0 regional record, SHSU's chances of advancing to the Super Regional were about 80 percent. Twenty minutes later when the game ended with TCU winning, SHSU's chances of winning the regional with a 1-1 record had dropped to less than 2 percent. 

Let those numbers marinate on your brain for a minute.

Now, consider this: the Fort Worth Regional winner is playing Pepperdine in a Super Regional this coming weekend. The Waves, also a No. 3 seed, do not have lights at their baseball stadium, meaning there was an excellent chance SHSU could have been hosting a three-game series with a trip to the College World Series in Omaha, NE, on the line.

Heartbreak. That was the extra layer in Barfield’s voice as he described the chaotic scene unfolding in front of him. It was the agony every SHSU fan that sat at Lupton Stadium or listened on the radio for nearly seven hours was feeling.

 A regional championship, a Huntsville Super Regional, and a trip to Omaha. All of it was in the palm of Sam Houston State’s hands, until Jeff Head raised his in the air.

Yeah, this one is going to hurt for a while.