JUCO Top 25 Teams: April 28

Junior College Top 25: April 21

Playoffs begin on select fronts in the junior-college ranks this week, though little of the action will involve the nation’s top-ranked clubs, most of which will be idle. So it’s entirely possible that next week’s ranking of the nation’s Top 25 teams will be a virtual carbon copy of this week’s.

For all intents and purposes, though, that will be nothing new as the top teams in Perfect Game’s junior-college poll have remained relatively unchanged for weeks—10 weeks to be exact in the case of the top three: California’s No. 1-ranked San Joaquin Delta College (33-2), which has held the No. 1 spot over that entire period, and two Florida schools, St. Johns River (44-8) and Chipola (39-9), which have held firm at Nos. 2 and 3.

Kansas’ Cowley County College (47-3) has continued to win at a dizzying pace, but has been stymied in its bid to crack the top three spots and holds down the No. 4 position again. There has been no change among the top seven teams from a week ago, and only one new club, North Carolina’s Pitt Community College, has cracked the top 25.

The 36-team California state junior-college tournament gets underway Tuesday, with San Joaquin Delta and No. 5-ranked Palomar slated to open tournament play this weekend. A state champion is slated to be crowned May 23-25 in Fresno.

The only other Top 10 team slated to begin post-season play this weekend is No. 7 Walters State, which will participate in the Tennessee state tournament.

Both St. Johns River and Chipola open post-season play on May 8, when the hotly-contested Florida junior-college tournament opens in Lakeland, Fla. The winner of that tournament will move on to the annual Junior College World Series May 23-30 in Grand Junction, Colo., where it will be joined by nine other National Junior College Athletic regional champions.


Records through games of April 26