The final weekend of college baseball’s regular season is upon us.

In the Pac-12, every team faces its bitterest rival with five schools still having a chance to finish on top of the standings. In additional to the conference championship the Arizona Wildcats have a big goal that requires paying special attention to one other series outside the Pac-12.

Here’s the official RPI heading into this week for the 19 teams Arizona has faced this year:

	RPI	Prev	UA Rec
UCLA	3	3	1-2
Oregon	5	5	1-2
Rice	11	19	1-1
Stanford	12	11	3-0
ARIZONA	17	17	-
Arizona St.	18	21	1-1
New Mex. St.	25	30	0-2
Oregon St.	38	34	2-1
Auburn	54	53	2-1
Washington	55	52	2-1
Cal	65	75	3-0
Utah Valley	67	67	1-1
Wash. St.	79	81	2-1
USC	88	78	2-1
E. Tenn. St.	150	146	3-0
N. Dakota St.	184	177	2-1
UC Davis	185	189	2-0
Utah	189	200	2-1
E. Michigan	209	201	3-0
Harvard	236	232	3-0

Oregon and UCLA remain in the top five. Barring an epic collapse both will get national seeds giving the Pac-12 the inside track to get two teams to the College World Series for the second time in three years. The Pac has an active streak of 15 straight years putting at least one team in the CWS.

The latest polls:

	BAS	COL	NAT	PER	USA	Avg
Oregon	5	1	9	3	9	5.4
UCLA	9	10	10	9	10	9.6
ARIZONA	13	8	13	11	13	11.6
Stanford	14	12	11	12	11	12.0
ASU	16	17	22	13	26	18.8
OSU	23	26	20	22	20	22.2

BAS = Baseball America
COL = Collegiate Baseball
NAT = National Collegiate Baseball Writers
PER = Perfect Game
USA = USA Today/ESPN coaches’ poll

The Pac-12 has two consensus top-10 teams for the first time since the beginning of April. Everybody moved up a bit in the average rankings which is the direction you want to be going headed into Selection Monday.

TWIT-Pac says farewell to the regular season:

#18.8 ASU (35-18 / 17-10) at #11.6 ARIZONA (36-16 / 18-9)
The UA hasn’t won the season series against Arizona State since 2006. This is key series numero uno, and if the Cats are successful, the reward will be great.

#5.4 Oregon (42-14 / 19-8) at #22.2 OSU (35-18 / 15-12)
Oregon State hasn’t lost a series this month including beating Stanford in Corvallis. There is hope, Wildcat Universe, in the second most important series of the weekend.

USC (23-29 / 8-19) at #9.6 UCLA (39-14 / 17-10)
The Bruins are another team that has turned it on in May, posting an 11-2 record this month.

Cal (27-24 / 10-17) at #12.0 Stanford (37-14 / 17-10)
Eight straight wins and counting for Stanford. The Cardinal has allowed a mere 16 total runs in those eight games.

WSU (27-26 / 11-16) at Washington (28-24 / 11-16)
Just two weeks ago the Huskies had an RPI in the low 40s and looked like a lock for the NCAA tournament. Getting swept in consecutive conference series, however, is not a good way to impress the committee.

Utah (14-38 / 7-23) vs. UC Santa Barbara (25-27) & Cal State Bakersfield (22-29)
You see what you’re making the Utes do, Colorado? Turn some of those ski poles into baseball bats and get with the program.

Cal State Fullerton (33-18) at Long Beach State (27-25)
This may as well be a Pac-12 game as far as Arizona is concerned. In the third critical series Wildcat fans should be rooting for Long Beach, the second-place team in the Big West, to upset first-place Fullerton.

Why? Read on.

* * *

The most realistic way for Arizona to get into first place is taking two of three from ASU with Oregon dropping two of three at OSU. If that happens it may very well end up being a four-way tie for the Pac-12 title with UCLA and Stanford poised to deliver sweeps. Not that the Wildcats would complain after two decades without a conference championship. The bottom line is there are a lot of people rooting against Oregon this weekend.

Folks in Tucson will also be rooting against Cal State Fullerton.

As we discussed, the final regional hosting slot in all likelihood will come down to either the Wildcats or Titans. Why not both, you ask? Oregon, UCLA and Stanford have regionals locked up based on their RPI and overall profiles. In the past ten years the NCAA has put four regionals out west three times, three regionals out west six times, and once awarded just two western regionals.

There just won’t be five. College baseball’s tournament is still based on geography as much as possible. That’s also why if the UA hosts, New Mexico State will be in the Tucson bracket for sure. If New Mexico gets in the Lobos will also be at Hi Corbett.

In that way it’s an advantage for the UA that the co-champs in the WAC and Mountain West are located closer to the Old Pueblo than the O.C. But would the NCAA give the Pac-12 four regionals while making the Big West champion travel?

Here’s the full spectrum of possibilities for the BatCats this weekend:

- Pac-12 champions and regional hosts
- Regional hosts
- Beat ASU but don’t host
- Lose series and don’t host
- Get swept and get shipped off to play at #1 Florida State while the City of Tucson revokes the Hi Corbett agreement forcing next year’s team to play at Sportspark

So there’s a lot going on.

Here are the game times for the three series that matter to Arizona Baseball:

SERIES	FRI	SAT	SUN
ASU at UA	6 p.m.	6 p.m.	12 p.m.
UO at OSU	5:30 p.m.	1 p.m.	1 p.m.
CSF at LBSU	6:30 p.m.	5:30 p.m.	1 p.m.

It will not be a dull Memorial Day weekend.

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Scott Terrell will have game updates on all three key series via Twitter with UA/ASU recaps on Facebook.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 25th, 2012 at 12:56 AM and is filed under Sports. Tags for this post: Andy Lopez, ASU, Baseball, polls, RPI, TWIT-Pac. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.