Tim Corbin on Vanderbilt baseball scheduling, RPI on NCAA tournament bubble

Vanderbilt baseball has reached the threshold of 13 SEC wins that is normally needed to make the NCAA tournament , but the Commodores are considered a longshot to continue their 19-year streak. The reason for that is an RPI that sits at No. 72.

Winning a home series against South Carolina has done little for the Commodores (31-24, 13-16 SEC), who won the first game, 9-1, on May 14 and the second game, 9-5, on May 15. Part of the problem for Vanderbilt has been scheduling 13 games against teams outside the top 200 in RPI. Some of those teams are midweek opponents who are on the schedule nearly every year, like Belmont, Middle Tennessee and Evansville.

But the Commodores also scheduled eight games early in the season against Marist, Eastern Michigan and North Dakota State, three teams that do not typically have high RPIs. "Teams that were coming south, we wedged them between tournaments," Corbin said. "At the time, North Dakota State was a regional team last year, so good opponent, Marist is − just depending on the year, we just scheduled them because they were coming this way.

" Every team that had at least 13 SEC wins since 2023 has made a regional, but all of those teams were in the top 40 of RPI. Corbin said that part of the issue with RPI was a reversal of fortunes from 2025, in that a lot of the teams on Vanderbilt's 2026 schedule were stronger earlier in the season but fizzled out. In total, the Commodores played eight games against six different opponents in 2026 that were in the top 50 in RPI last year but not this year: Arizona, UC Irvine, Troy, LSU, Xavier and Louisville.