The Cats had to hang up their high-fives for the year.
Photo by David Kadlubowski/The Arizona Republic

The Arizona Wildcats baseball team saw its season end with two losses in three games at the Fort Worth Regional in the 2010 NCAA tournament.

The weekend got off to a good – albeit uncomfortable – start. The Wildcats built a 10-4 lead against Baylor in Friday’s game before the Bears stormed back with five runs in the bottom of the 9th to put a real scare into the guys from Tucson.

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The Arizona Wildcats salvaged the final game of the regular season thanks to a huge home run from Steve Selsky and the work of four pitchers.

Selsky’s game-winning (and potentially season-saving) shot came with two outs in the 6th inning. Vincent Littleman, Nick Cunningham, Stephen Manthei and Bryce Bandilla combined to limit Oregon State to a single run in the 3-1 victory.

Now things get interesting.

Here are the final Pac-10 standings:

The RPI numbers are the estimates going into Sunday’s games.

I didn’t think the USC/Washington series mattered but it is good that the Trojans took the final two games of the series to leave the Huskies alone in 9th place. It cleans up the standings so the top eight teams are clearly the top eight teams and all can argue they deserve a bid.

Do they all deserve a bid? ASU and UCLA are officially in as they have already been announced as regional hosts. Washington State is alone in third place with a top-30 RPI. The Cougars are a lock.

After that? This is where the human element of a particular selection committee comes in. Of the five Pac-10 bubble teams the two with the best RPI have the worst conference record and the two with the lowest RPI have the best conference record.

If I had to rank the five teams based on their likelihood of getting a bid I’d go with Stanford, Oregon, OSU, Arizona and Cal. Stanford has the most wins against the RPI top-50. The Beavers and Wildcats have an almost identical profile with OSU getting the advantage due to head-to-head and a better finish. If the league only gets seven in the odd man out should be Cal. Some will agree but others will not.

We’ll see how this story ends in just a few hours as the field of 64 is revealed at 9:30 a.m. Arizona/Pacific time Monday morning.

All eight would be great.

There’s not much to say after this one. The Cal Golden Bears blitzed the Arizona Wildcats with a 29-11 run in the opening ten minutes. It was 41-17 with six minutes left in the half. Arizona’s defense was as invisible as the lettering on Cal’s white-on-silver uniforms.

Doesn’t the first game with the Bears seem like ages ago? After beating Cal to sit in a first-place tie the UA has dropped five of six. Now the Cats are closer to last place than first.

The Pac-10 game of the year will take place in Berkeley on Saturday and it will feature California and Arizona State. If the Bears win they clinch at least a share of the conference title. If the Sun Devils win they will be alone in first with two home games left.

It’s a dream scenario for two sets of long-suffering basketball fans (or, in ASU’s case, two long-suffering basketball fans).

As far as the JV game on Saturday, the Wildcats could obviously use a win against Stanford. But what they really need is to play with passion. Fire. Show some love for the game of basketball.

These guys need a dunk. They need a reason to chest-bump somebody. Attack the rim, attack the glass, and bring back No Easy Buckets. Buckets have been beyond easy the last couple weeks. On sale. Everything must go.

Now everything must stop.

Don’t use the freshman excuse as a reason to mail in the final three games. Show us why next year is going to be better. Give your teammates a reason to believe you will be the team playing for a championship in 2012.

Refuse to be invisible.

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What do you do when your basketball team is fading in February? You watch baseball!

The undefeated BatCats take the field Friday night against Long Beach State. The Dirtbags are off to a slow start, having scored only six runs in four games. They did however pick up a 2-1 win last Friday thanks to a complete game from junior right-hander Jake Thompson.

Arizona will counter with a young pitching rotation that just got younger. Freshman Stephen Manthei will start in place of junior Daniel Workman on Sunday. Kurt Heyer and Kyle Simon will attempt to repeat their opening-weekend success as the first two hurlers.

Can the UA offense maintain its 11 runs per game average as they step up in competition? Game times are 6 p.m. Friday and Saturday with a noon start on Sunday at Kindall Field/Sancet Stadium if you’re looking for a place to enjoy the Tucson weather, or just escape from the basketball team.