Tuesday Baseball News and Notes

A few baseball tidbits:

Casey Rihn has been kicked off the team. I feel for the kid and hope he lands on his feet, but resisting arrest is a pretty serious charge and I don't fault Coach Tanner for taking action.

Nick Ebert won a national Player of the Week award, while Sam Dyson won SEC Pitcher of the Week. If someone can explain to me how Ebert won a national player of the week award but didn't nab the SEC Player of the Week award, I'm all ears. The SEC award went to Ole Miss catcher Kyle Henson, who helped the Rebels take out Arkansas and win a share of the SEC Title. According to the Ole Miss website:

Henson helped push the Rebels to a share of the Southeastern Conference Championship over the weekend as he hit .500 (6x12) with six runs scored and eight RBI against 16th-ranked Arkansas. The senior posted a .971 slugging percentage as he belted out a home run and a double and posted a .571 on base percentage.

That's a fantastic weekend, but here's what Ebert did:

Ebert went 5-for-8 in the three-game sweep of then-No. 15 Georgia. Four of those hits against the Bulldogs cleared the wall, while he also drove in 10 runs.

You be the judge, folks.

Finally, let's take a look at the rankings, which we're back in:

• Rivals Ranked: 18
  
• ESPN/USA Today: 25
  
• Collegiate Baseball America: 25

Of course, what's more important is RPI. As in basketball, my understanding is that the NCAA pays closest attention to an RPI they calculate along with a team's record against other top teams when making their regional seedings. So, getting into that top 16 RPI is what we need to do to host a regional. Boyd's world RPI has a reputation as an accurate predictor of NCAA seeding practices, and they have us at 24. That means the chance is probably there to break into the top 16 if we take out some of the other highly ranked SEC teams in Hoover. It's a longshot, but not impossible.