Another exciting week of college baseball is in the books, and we head into conference play for a few leagues this coming weekend. There is quality ball being played across the national landscape and the more things change, the more they stay the same. The game continues to revolve around what happens on the mound and the teams that can hit the long ball are the ones piling up wins right not. There was no movement within our top-5 as LSU, Stanford, Arkansas, Wake Forest, and Tennessee all had perfect weeks.
As it stands currently, 7 of the teams in our rankings are among the top-25 in team ERA and 9 of them are in the top-25 in home runs. The ACC boasts three teams that remain undefeated in Wake Forest (13-0), Virginia (11-0), and NC State (12-0). The Demon Deacons are second in the nation in round trippers and fourth in the nation in team ERA. While the Wolfpack is twelfth in home runs and eighth in earned run average, with the Cavaliers coming in fifth in the nation in ERA as well. There were no new additions to the list and no team dropped out of the top-25 but there were a few teams that scrambled a bit this week. The Miami Hurricanes went (1-3) falling 8 spots this week as they dropped a midweek contest to FAU and lost 2 of 3 on the road at UF. While fellow in-state power FSU falls to 25th as they went (2-2) giving up 29 runs on the weekend where they dropped the first two games of a home series against Florida Gulf Coast.
While there seems to be a gap between the top-10 teams in the poll and the rest of the nation, things get very crowded at the bottom of the poll. Teams on the cusp of the top-25 had great weekends, such as Alabama who remains unbeaten at (12-0). Campbell (8-2) went to Louisiana and took the series from the Ragin’ Cajuns and South Carolina (11-1) took down archrival Clemson after dropping the first game on Friday night. Iowa swept through the South Alabama Invitational to move to (8-1) and UC Irvine was perfect against Arizona State to push their record to (10-1) on the season.
The ACC, CAA, MW, Pac-12 and the WAC all open up conference play this weekend, so watch to see which teams make statements in the first week of league play.