Henry Pelinski and Emory last played a game on April 25. Have the Eagles packed up the bats and balls yet? Emory athletics photo

By Pat Coleman
D3sports.com

Creating an Division III baseball NCAA Tournament bracket is pretty simple, when you come down to it. You take 10 regional rankings, pick 17 at-large teams, create 16 first-round sites, and ... well, it's a lot of numbers.

All of this makes the job of picking two Pool B teams and 17 true at-large teams (Pool C) a little more involved than it used to be, and constructing a bracket has some considerations that need to be made as well. But the Field of 60 includes 14 four-team double-elimination regionals, and two best-of-five series between two teams.

As usual, these picks do not influence the NCAA Tournament selection committee's picks, nor does our Top 25 poll. No national Top 25 is ever considered in an NCAA selection process.

Here are our projections.

• NCAA Selection Show broadcast at 12 p.m. ET
• Who's in automatically: 41 conference winners
• NCAA tournament FAQs

We start by projecting the regional rankings for each of the 10 regions because that's how the process actually starts. The regional committees that have been producing those rankings do it one more time and then send them to the national tournament selection committee. That committee may make adjustments to the regional rankings, which can alter which teams are regionally ranked, which then changes some teams' records against regionally ranked opponents (one of the criteria in selecting at-large teams).

Eventually the national committee ends up with a final list of regional rankings, which they will announce after the brackets are released. The rankings include teams that have clinched automatic bids, which are set aside for the bracketing stage. Then the highest ranked team without an automatic bid within each region comes to the table for consideration as an at-large candidate. There are 10 teams up for consideration at any point, one from each region. When a team is picked, the next highest ranked team within that region comes to the table.

Pool B is set aside for teams in conferences which are not eligible for automatic bids. This year, those conferences are the City University of New York Athletic Conference, the Coast-to-Coast Conference, the College Conference of the South, and the University Athletic Association. Our committee picked Salisbury and Christopher Newport, both members of the C2C, from this group, and referred the rest fo the at-large pool.

We knew there were a number of obvious picks who were going to make the NCAA Tournament, no matter what, and rather than go through the extensive debate, we placed the following teams in the field as at-large selections: Cortland, Marietta, Shenandoah, Baldwin Wallace, Salve Regina.

Once we get to this point, this is what the board looks like, the 10 teams actually being considered, including the teams' D-III winning percentage and their D-III strength of schedule:

Region 1: Middlebury, .703, .561
Region 2: Rhode Island College, .698, .530
Region 3: Rochester, .667, .526
Region 4: Rowan, .698, .564
Region 5: Elizabethtown, .738, .554
Region 6: Mary Washington, .667, .580
Region 7: Case Western Reserve, .675, .579
Region 8: Webster, .682, .543
Region 9: Buena Vista, .769, .560
Region 10: La Verne, .651, .533

This seems like as good a time as any to express our condolences to the Region 10 regional advisory committee for the work it has to do this year to separate a number of significantly identical resumes, none of which is an obvious at-large contender.

We are five teams into the process and our sixth team is Case Western Reserve. The Spartans have a quite good resume -- although their winning percentage is on the low end for this group, they have wins against Marietta, Cortland and Denison from teams in the top half of regional rankings, plus wins against John Carroll, Washington & Jefferson and Wash U. They also have losses against these teams, but they total eight wins against regionally ranked opponents, most of them highly ranked in regions. We'll take them here. Case is replaced on the board from Region 7 by Wittenberg (.762, .533, one win against a regionally ranked opponent in Baldwin Wallace). 

Taken next was Buena Vista. The BVU resume is actually a little vanilla, but the Beavers have a win against Benedictine and St. John Fisher, which are each in the top half of its regional ranking. The combo of winning percentage and SOS is among the best on the board at this time. BVU is replaced from Region 9 by UW-Stevens Point (.725, .526). UW-Stevens Point goes next and is replaced by UW-Whitewater (.698, .573).

Our next pick was Rowan, from Region 4. The Profs feature a reasonable winning percentage and strength of schedule and could even have gone ahead of Buena Vista based on their head-to-head results, but were going to be in regardless. Rowan also has key wins against opponents highly ranked in their region such as Aurora and Ithaca. Rowan is replaced on the board by Misericordia (.733, .554).

Next to be picked: Mary Washington, meaning we have three teams from the C2C in our field. (Spoilers: This will not be the only conference to get three teams into our projected field.) Of course, for the C2C, that means we have every team playing baseball from this conference in the field, but if you have a conference which is a collective 20 games above .500 per school, we'll listen. We finished with Mary Washington in our Region 6 projected ranking, helped out quite a bit by its win against Christopher Newport in the past week. That helped UMW move ahead of Randolph-Macon (which it already had two head-to-head wins against). Mary Washington is replaced on the board by Emory.

Pause for a second. Our Region 6 projection brought Mary Washington into the ranking, and we highly considered Roanoke as well. The Region 6 committee may sdo so as well, but Roanoke's winning percentage is just .622 and that makes it a tough sell.

Resetting our board for the moment: Middlebury, Rhode Island College, Rochester, Misericordia, Elizabettown, Emory, Wittenberg, Webster, UW-Whitewater, La Verne.

At this spot, our committee picks out Misericordia. The Cougars have a key win against Baldwin Wallace and another against Arcadia. The fact that Misericordia won one of six against Arcadia and didn't get shut out might well save them here, as we take them at the No. 11 spot. They are replaced by Kean, which has a .571 SOS, but a .611 winning percentage. It's likely the end of the line for Region 4 for this projection.

UW-Whitewater goes next, with wins against Spalding and Loras and UW-Oshkosh, each in the bottom half of regional rankings, as well as two wins against UW-Stevens Point (in five attempts). Whitewater lost all six meetings against UW-La Crosse, which won the WIAC automatic bid and was the No. 2 team in our Region 9, and could be the No. 1 team in the final committee ranking, which we should see Monday afternoon. Whitewater is replaced by UW-Oshkosh (.625, .572).

Middlebury, which was discussed as early as the No. 6 pick, finally goes here at No. 13. The Panthers have a win against La Verne, plus two out of three against Amherst, two wins against Trinity (Conn.), and two against Colby.

The resume for La Verne is super interesting. The Leopards have wins against Endicott, Webster and Tufts. Also losses to Lynchburg and Middlebury, and two losses to Endicott. And they won one of three against Rochester. Rochester should probably get in over La Verne, but La Verne's other wins and overall resume gets Region 10 an at-large.

Chapman (.636, .557) follows right away. Super similar resume, with wins against Webster (two of three), Tufts (two of three), and Endicott. They are followed by Pacific (.676, .550), whose resume included wins against Texas Lutheran (ranked seventh of seven in Region 10) and Lewis & Clark, (unranked). 

Elizabethtown followed, with the second-to-last pick. None of E-town's regionally ranked wins is super exciting, but there are wins against St. John Fisher and Penn State-Harrisburg. Plus, four wins against Catholic. The Cardinals come to the board with a .703 winning percentage and a .571 SOS.

For the final round, Kean gets eliminated for a low winning percentage, Pacific for no wins against teams in the upper half of a regional ranking, Colby for general low winning percentage against regionally ranked opponents, Rhodie Island College for just one win against a regionally ranked opponent, UW-Oshkosh for overall low winning percentage, Webster for just one win against a team in the upper half of a regional ranking. At this point, looking at Emory and Wittenberg, Emory defeated Wittenberg twice head-to-head. Wittenberg, in fact, had just one win against a team in our final regional rankings. 

Emory gets that last spot.

Our projected 17 at-large bids go to Cortland, Marietta, Shenandoah, Baldwin Wallace, Salve Regina, Case Western Reserve, Buena Vista, UW-Stevens Point, Rowan, Mary Washington, Misericordia, UW-Whitewater, Middlebury, La Verne, Chapman, Elizabethtown and Emory.

Here's who was left on the board when Emory was picked 17th.

Here's how we would pair them up:

Super Regional 1

Johns Hopkins hosts a regional with N.C. Wesleyan, St. Joseph's (L.I.) and Penn State-Altoona.
La Verne hosts a five-game series with Lewis & Clark*.

Super Regional 2

Shenandoah hosts a regional with Eastern Connecticut, Chapman* and Susquehanna.
Baldwin Wallace hosts a regional with UW-Whitewater, Spalding and Beloit.

Super Regional 3

Salisbury hosts a five-game series with Emory*.
Arcardia hosts a regional with Christopher Newport, Case Western Reserve and Lebanon Valley.

Super Regional 4

East Texas Baptist hosts a regional in which Birmingham-Southern is the top seed, and which also includes Trinity (Texas) and Cal Lutheran*. ETBU hosts because it is more than 500 miles from Trinity to B-SC. 
UW-La Crosse hosts a regional with Bethel, Loras and Bethany Lutheran.

Super Regional 5

Endicott hosts a regional with Penn State-Harrisburg, St. John Fisher and Johnson & Wales.
Marietta hosts a regional with Mary Washington, Brockport and Franklin.

Super Regional 6

Lynchburg hosts a regional with Rowan, John Carroll and Keystone.
Cortland hosts a regional with Elizabethtown, Mitchell and TCNJ.

Super Regional 7

Aurora hosts a regional with Buena Vista, UW-Stevens Point and Augustana.
Denison hosts a regional with Misericordia, Washington & Jefferson and Adrian.

Super Regional 8

Wheaton (Mass.) hosts a regional with Middlebury, Immaculata and Husson.
Salve Regina hosts a regional with Tufts, Ithaca and Bridgewater State.

* Teams which are flying in the first weekend.

Teams from the same conference are not allowed to meet in the first round any longer, which prevents us from putting three SCIAC teams in the same regional. This isn't a bad thing, necessarily. Two-team regionals are often used to help geography, and yes, we could create a series with ETBU hosting Trinity and put Emory, Franklin, and a SCIAC team at Birmingham-Southern. You may well see the committee do this. But Salisbury is also somewhat geographically isolated and could host a five-game series. So could Christopher Newport. 

Keep an eye on D3baseball.com for coverage of the bracket reveal on Monday.