TCU rises to No. 5 in RPI rankings, putting national seed closer

TCU rose to No. 5 in the RPI ratings following its sweep of Texas, solidifying the likelihood of a national seed and home field advantage in the first two rounds of the NCAA postseason.

The Horned Frogs (35-11) entered the weekend ninth in the measure, which factors winning percentage (25 percent), strength of schedule (50 percent) and opponents’ strength of schedule (25 percent) and is part of the criteria used by the playoff selection committee.

In the past four weeks, TCU has played four Big 12 series against strong RPI teams — West Virginia, Baylor, Texas Tech and Texas — and gone 7-5. It’s the highest RPI for the Frogs since they were rated No. 4 going into a March series at UC-Irvine.

The Frogs get another chance to boost their rating when they play a road series this weekend against Oklahoma, 20th in RPI. Road wins have more RPI value than home or neutral-site wins. And a series win would also clinch the Big 12 regular season championship for the Frogs and the top seed at the conference tournament in Oklahoma City.

“There’s still a lot of baseball to play. OU’s been playing outstanding and has had a great year,” TCU coach Jim Schlossnagle said. “Right now, we’ve got to get through exams and get that off their minds. Then, the best time of the year is here, when it’s just baseball.”

TCU rose to No. 6 in three major rankings — Baseball America, the USA Today Coaches Poll and D1Baseball.com.

Second-place Texas Tech is idle this week before closing the regular season at home against Kansas.

TCU finishes the regular season with four non-conference games, next week at home against UT Arlington and a series at Cal.

This story was originally published May 8, 2017 at 12:21 PM with the headline "TCU rises to No. 5 in RPI rankings, putting national seed closer."