Mustangs should have faced Bound Brook or Vo-Tech
By: Rudy Brandl
This is going to sound like sour grapes, but the Somerset County baseball tournament seeding committee has got to be joking.
Manville High played a terrible baseball game in Saturday’s preliminary round, but the Mustangs shouldn’t have been facing Franklin. How does a team that’s supposed to be getting a higher seed (11) wind up with a much tougher game than the No. 12 team?
Anyone who thinks Franklin should have been ranked behind Somerset Vo-Tech hasn’t been paying attention. How can a committee place Vo-Tech, which plays a soft schedule, ahead of a Franklin team that faces the biggest schools in Central Jersey?
This oversight cost the Mustangs in the preliminary round of the tournament. They should have been playing either Bound Brook or Vo-Tech, not a Franklin team that rolled to an 11-1 victory in Manville.
The Mustangs defeated Vo-Tech by 10 runs but lost to Franklin by the same margin. Is that enough proof that Franklin should have been ranked higher in the county tournament? How about considering the fact that Franklin had just defeated a solid Warren Hills club?
MHS head coach Steve Venuto didn’t take as much issue with the seeding positions as he did with the general tournament process. Venuto doesn’t like the multiple byes awarded to the top four teams. In a 15-school field, Venuto believes that the No. 1 team should receive a bye with everyone else playing a first round game.
"Somerville is 8-5 and they have a two-week bye," Venuto said. "That gives them an advantage. Anybody can beat anybody on any given day."
The Pioneers received the third seed despite losing to Hillsborough, which was ranked sixth. The Raiders entered the seeding meeting on a four-game losing streak or they may have earned one of those top four spots.
The current tournament set-up gives the top four teams a bye into the quarterfinals, with the 5-8 positions hosting first round games against the survivors of preliminaries. Since there’s no No. 16 team in the baseball draw, the No. 9 team automatically qualifies to play the eighth seed in the second week of the tournament.
That leaves six teams, ranked from 10-15, to fight it out in the preliminary round. Despite a loss to North Plainfield, the Mustangs got the higher seed based on a much better overall record. Nevertheless, Manville was hit with by far the toughest preliminary game.
I wouldn’t have balked at the opening round matchup nearly as much if Manville were seeded 12th and Franklin 13th. However, the committee was smart enough to put Manville at No. 11 but the coaches made a big mistake in the final three spots.
The 10, 11 and 12 positions went to home teams Watchung Hills, Manville and North Plainfield. That order makes sense, but the 13-15 spots for the visiting teams was way out of whack.
Vo-Tech was ranked ahead of Franklin based on one more victory. Now, after Saturday’s action, both teams have three wins. Unfortunately, all this happened at Manville’s expense.
There’s also been some controversy in the SCT softball bracket. Bound Brook, originally the 14th seed slated to play at Manville, didn’t like its position so it traded places with Gill St. Bernards. Franklin remained last, but again it’s unlikely that the Skyland Conference team couldn’t do some damage against the smaller schools in the field.
Manville blanked Gill to move on in the tournament, but will now travel to Somerville instead of North Plainfield, the original No. 6 seed that moved down a notch to the seventh slot. This may help the Manville girls since they’ve already lost a lopsided game to North Plainfield.
No matter what, you have to eventually beat everyone to win a tournament but it’s tough to get going if those early matchups aren’t fair. Just ask the Manville High baseball team.