Michael Lev column: No matter what happens in the Pac-12 Tournament championship game, Arizona baseball has proved it warrants a spot in the NCAA field of 64.
Michael Lev SCOTTSDALE — Regardless of the outcome of Saturday night’s Pac-12 Tournament championship game, Arizona has proved it belongs in the NCAA field of 64.But the Wildcats have shown they’re worthy of an at-large berth in the NCAA Tournament — the alternative to not winning the Pac-12 title game against Oregon, slated for 7 p.m. Saturday at Scottsdale Stadium.
People are also reading… With their résumé suddenly stocked with Quad 1 victories, the Wildcats' RPI rose into the 40s. They entered the bubble conversation. Now they’re the talk of college baseball — the hottest team on the West Coast. I know, I know; that’s not how this works. The field of 64 includes automatic qualifiers from “mid-major” conferences — which is a good thing for the sport. Think about March Madness: It wouldn’t be the same without George Mason, Florida Atlantic or Princeton.
There would be more pain along the way, though. At one point, Arizona suffered four walk-off losses in a stretch of five straight road defeats. The fourth such setback happened in the series opener at Stanford on May 12. The following day, the Wildcats had the look of a team that was cooked; they lost 9-2. It wasn’t unlike the Saturday game at Oregon State that followed a walk-off loss the previous night. The hangover effect is hard to shake.
“When we got beat on Saturday in Palo Alto, they got together on Sunday and they sort of banded together,” Hale said. “It’s been a tough year. Obviously, we’ve scored a ton of runs; we’ve given up a ton of runs. And the hitters finally just said, ‘We’re a team. If we need 20-some runs to win a game, we will .’ ”
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