GREENSBORO -- N.C. State coach Elliott Avent doesn't think his team needs to win the ACC baseball tournament, which begins today in NewBridge Bank Park, in order to get into the NCAA tournament.
"Our résumé speaks for itself," Avent said Tuesday.
Avent pointed to his squad's 36 wins, seventh-place finish and .500 record in one of the toughest conferences in college baseball. The Wolfpack also had a 5-4 record against teams in the top 10 of the NCAA RPI (ratings percentage index), and an 8-2 record in its past 10 games.
"I don't know what we have to accomplish [to get into the NCAA]," Avent said. "I know what we'd like to accomplish. I'd like to win this thing. ... I want to win it to win an ACC championship. We've never approached [winning] the ACC tournament as what we have to do to get to the next round."
N.C. State plays second-seeded Clemson (37-19, 18-12 ACC) at 8 p.m. today, the last of three games in the opening day of the tournament, which ends Sunday.
The Wolfpack (36-20, 15-15) finished the season with a sweep of Duke and moved up 10 spaces to No. 49 in the NCAA's RPI, which was released Tuesday afternoon.
Getting into the top 50 moves N.C. State back into the NCAA bubble, said Aaron Fitt, who covers college baseball for Baseball America magazine. The 64 NCAA tournament teams will be selected on Monday.
"They're finishing strong, other bubble teams are falling apart," said Fitt, who believes the Pack needs to win at least one game in Greensboro. "The only thing they can't do is go 0-3."
Ahead of the Wolfpack in the RPI are the other seven teams that qualified for the conference tournament, including eighth-place Boston College (No. 46), which swept NCSU in late April.
Also ahead of N.C. State was North Carolina, with an RPI that moved 10 spots to No. 20 after a sweep of Virginia Tech. The Heels, which finished tied for eighth in the league but lost a tiebreaker to Boston College for the final ACC tournament berth, still have a chance to make the NCAA tournament.
A team's RPI is an important factor looked at by the Division I Baseball Committee in deciding the tournament field.
"It's a tool in the tool box," Tim Weiser, who is chairman of the committee and also is deputy commissioner of the Big 12, said Tuesday.
Weiser said there's no magic number a team can reach to ensure an at-large bid to the tournament.
Weiser wouldn't talk about specific teams or scenarios but said it's possible that a team that doesn't make its conference tournament could be selected for the NCAA tournament over a team in the conference that did qualify.
"A scenario I could paint is where a team comes on strong late versus somebody that started out strong but is fading," Weiser said.
That doesn't match up to the North Carolina-N.C. State scenario. North Carolina finished strong, but so did N.C. State.
The Heels were 0-10 against the top 10 opponents but did not play teams in the bottom 75. N.C. State had five opponents in the bottom 75.
According to the NCAA's director of statistics, Jim Wright, the RPI is made up of three main factors: winning percentage (25 percent), strength of schedule (50 percent) and opponents' strength of schedule (25 percent).
"[N.C. State] hurt themselves with that scheduling, but I think they've overcome that," Fitt said.
As far as teams getting in despite not getting into their conference tournaments, Weiser said, he "wouldn't say it's rare. We've done that with both the SEC and the Big 12."
Weiser said the committee doesn't worry about how many teams from the same conference make the tournament.
"Our charge is to find the best 64 teams that we can," Weiser said.
Avent said he thinks the ACC deserves to get nine teams into the NCAA tournament. The league has never had more than seven teams get in.
Fitt said he thought the ACC will get eight teams in, and he thinks Boston College, which lost six of its last eight regular-season games, will be the team left out.
