DII/DIII/NAIA Rankings Update: May 7

Nick Herfordt

The college baseball postseason is officially on the doorstep, and while the latest rankings didn’t bring many surprises, the tension is building as teams jockey for position and prepare for their shot at glory. Conference tournaments are underway or just around the corner, and for many programs, it's now or never to prove they belong in the national title conversation. The margins for error are shrinking, and the pressure is ratcheting up — the postseason promises drama, heartbreak, and heroics in equal measure.

While things remained mostly steady across the board, one massive shockwave hit the NAIA landscape: one of the division’s top-ranked teams had all of its wins wiped from the record books due to the use of an ineligible player. The ruling not only stripped the team of its victories but may also derail its postseason hopes entirely. It’s a brutal blow that underscores how fragile success can be — and how off-field issues can unravel even the most dominant seasons. As brackets take shape, this shakeup could have ripple effects throughout the national tournament picture, opening the door for another hungry contender to rise.

NCAA DII

There weren’t any major shakeups in the rankings this week, but there was a notable, better-late-than-never addition to the Top 25 that deserves the spotlight.

Early in the season, Belmont Abbey was trounced by Catawba in a midweek matchup, 26–8. That lopsided defeat lit a fire under the Crusaders, who bounced back just days later to take a series from North Greenville — a perennial powerhouse that’s been a fixture in the top half of the rankings for the better part of the past decade. Since then, the Abbey has stacked up a string of quality wins, toppling Francis Marion and Young Harris, and even avenging their early-season drubbing by Catawba.

After a stumble in the Conference Carolinas tournament — dropping their second game — the Crusaders roared back with five straight elimination wins to claim their first conference crown since 2009. That impressive run earned them an automatic bid into the NCAA Southeast Regional, arguably the toughest and most exclusive bracket in all of Division II baseball. With the momentum surging and their résumé undeniable, Belmont Abbey breaks into the rankings for the first time this season, landing at No. 23.

The race for the national title also got a little more interesting. Tampa and Angelo State have dominated most of the year and looked like they were in a league of their own. But Millersville has forced its way into the conversation in emphatic fashion. The Marauders swept East Stroudsburg — one of the PSAC’s other top teams — in a commanding four-game series. They’ve now won 14 of their last 15 games, with their lone setback coming against West Chester. Millersville is now just one win away from matching the program’s all-time record for victories — and peaking at just the right time.

Meanwhile, Augustana — once ranked as high as No. 9 in the preseason before falling out of the Top 25 midway through the year — is suddenly looking very dangerous again. Powered by the red-hot bat of Jack Hines, who’s hitting an eye-popping .453 with 28 stolen bases, the Vikings have dropped only one game since early April to a team not named Minnesota State.

Rank	School	State	Record	Last Wk	Prev Rk
1	Tampa Spartans	FL	41-6	3-0	1
2	Angelo State Rams	TX	41-7	0-0	2
3	Millersville Marauders	PA	38-7	4-0	5
4	Central Missouri Mules	MO	38-10	3-0	3
5	Minnesota State Mavericks	MN	44-5	5-0	7
6	Catawba Indians	NC	40-12	4-0	9
7	Texas Tyler Patriots	TX	43-9	2-0	8
8	Point Loma Sea Lions	CA	36-14	4-2	11
9	North Greenville Trailblazers	SC	43-13	1-2	4
10	Colorado Mesa Mavericks	CO	36-11	3-1	12
11	Lenoir-Rhyne Bears	NC	43-10	3-1	13
12	Westmont Warriors	CA	38-12	1-1	10
13	Florida Southern Moccasins	FL	34-13	2-1	14
14	East Stroudsburg Warriors	PA	35-13	0-4	6
15	Young Harris Mountain Lions	GA	40-15	3-2	15
16	Grand Valley State Lakers	MI	39-10	4-0	16
17	Pittsburg State Gorillas	KS	39-9	3-0	17
18	Lander Bearcats	SC	40-13	3-0	19
19	North Georgia Nighthawks	GA	39-15	3-2	18
20	Northwest Nazarene Nighthawks	ID	38-12	0-0	20
21	West Chester Golden Rams	PA	35-14	3-1	23
22	Augustana Vikings	SD	36-14	5-0	24
23	Belmont Abbey Crusaders	NC	40-15	6-1
24	Carson-Newman Eagles	TN	37-17	2-2	21
25	Francis Marion Patriots	SC	40-13	1-2	22
DROP	Lewis Flyers	IL	36-14	2-2	25

NAIA

There was a substantial change in the rankings, but it has nothing to do with results on the field.

Faulkner, a team which has a long history of success and has been in the Perfect Game Top 10 almost every week this season, was forced to forfeit 39 games after it was revealed that one of their players, who had been deemed eligible, was in fact very much ineligible.
I’m not going to name the player—the reason being that it may provide him some anonymity for when anyone Googles his name in the future. However, it's very easy to determine who the culprit is if you really must know. I’m going to call him Elvis Crushel, the alias used for Andy Van Slyke in the obscure Japanese video game called Fighting Baseball 1994, which didn’t have MLBPA endorsement.

Crushel played three years previously at South Central Louisiana State University (another name change to protect the innocent), and he was very good there and helped the school achieve unprecedented success. In three seasons he batted .384 with 75 extra-base hits. Despite playing well at SCLSU, Elvis decided to take his talents elsewhere and played last year at Faulkner, where he had another quality season—his fourth full season of playing baseball.

After the 2024 season, Crushel emailed the NAIA Eligibility Center to inquire if he could continue to play. He had hoped that the special rules regarding the COVID pandemic would provide him with another year. Those rules stipulated that as long as a player didn’t participate in more than 50% of a team’s games and didn’t compete in the postseason, they could be granted an additional year. Crushel played in 34 of his school’s 48 games in 2021, which also included the NAIA Opening Round. Thus, he absolutely, positively would not be eligible for another season with the Eagles. However, the NAIA employee responded, “Spring 2021 did not count towards you[r] overall terms of attendance or seasons charged. . . . You will need to talk to you[r] AD on campus and have them map out each term/season you have used in the past to see if you have any eligibility left.”

It has not been reported why the NAIA official stated Crushel’s 2021 season wouldn’t have counted. This is admittedly conjecture, but based on other publicly available information, it seems that possibly Crushel had reviewed his information on the SCLSU website, which erroneously stated he had only played in a single game. Thus, that record was used by Crushel in his message to the NAIA to support that he had not played a full season. Nevertheless, the employee stated Elvis would have to take the matter up with someone on campus.

Crushel and an assistant coach, armed with a screenshot of the exchange with the NAIA, contacted Faulkner’s Assistant Athletic Director for Compliance and Academic Success. One of her job functions is to examine eligibility for students. The Assistant AD reported that she viewed the SCLSU baseball stats on their athletic website, where it, as it still does, shows in the 2021 cumulative statistics that Crushel only played in a single game. However, those stats are very obviously wrong. Only one player on the team is listed as having played a total of ten games. No pitcher has more than four appearances. The Assistant AD also attempted to review the official NAIA stats, but the NAIA transitioned from Dakstats to Prestostats in the fall of 2021, and the previous numbers are not available on the new platform. The ones remaining from Dakstats are mostly incomplete for the majority of schools from that season. Regardless, even if Crushel had played in just a single game, as the deeply erroneous SCLSU website stated, that game took place on May 18, which was during the postseason—thus negating the under-50% stipulation. From the sparse information gathered, the Assistant AD believed that Crushel was eligible to play, and his name was included on the roster sent to the NAIA at the start of the season. The NAIA approved his roster, and Elvis was certified to play another season.

It is possible that Elvis’ secret season could have gone unnoticed, but in mid-April, Faulkner played a series against William Carey. It was a matchup of two highly ranked teams with legitimate national title aspirations. The two conference rivals split the first two games of the series, and William Carey was able to tie the game in the top of the ninth in the finale to send the deciding game into extra innings. In the bottom of the 10th, Crushel led off the inning and was swinging for the fences. He swung so hard the bat flew out of play. Then, facing a 1-2 count, Crushel blasted a line drive down the right-field line over the fence for a walk-off home run. The win gave Faulkner the edge over the Crusaders in the conference standings.

Following the series, it came to the attention of William Carey’s athletic director that Crushel was an ineligible player. He contacted Faulkner’s previously mentioned Assistant Athletic Director for Compliance and Academic Success and informed her of the quandary. This set up an investigation into Elvis’ eligibility. While Faulkner was given the benefit of the doubt in regard to their attempt to verify if Crushel was eligible, they nonetheless were instructed to forfeit every game in which he appeared during the 2025 season—which had been the entirety of their schedule to date. They also would not be allowed to participate in the Southern States conference tournament sans Crushel in an attempt to earn a spot in the NAIA Opening Round without him.

NAIA leadership expressed in a phone call that Faulkner and South Central Louisiana State University should have communicated better to resolve the issue. Faulkner’s Assistant Athletic Director contested that calling SCLSU would have been abnormal, as there was already so much information publicly available.

Faulkner appealed the decision, as the NAIA bylaws do not necessitate forfeits if false information was supplied by the student. It seems possible that Crushel was not completely forthcoming regarding the totality of his summer 2024 communication with the NAIA with officials at Faulkner. Therefore, the Eagles would have been an innocent victim. Faulkner also contended that the email response to Crushel, which implied he would be eligible, was a mistake by the NAIA Eligibility Center, which also would provide for relief.

Alas, it was ruled in the United States District Court of the Middle District of Alabama Northern Division that SCLSU’s faulty website does not excuse Faulkner from performing additional steps to verify Crushel’s eligibility. Furthermore, even if the NAIA made a mistake, if Crushel lied to his coaches and school administrators, or both, “the buck stops with the school,” and due diligence was not performed.

The Court stated that Faulkner hadn’t taken reasonable steps to confirm Crushel’s eligibility. Supporting facts included that in 2023 the Faulkner Assistant AD had interviewed Elvis about 2021, determined that the season had counted, and that 2024 would be his final year on the team. Additionally, the game SCLSU did list on the website was played during the postseason, which would have undercut the email sent by the NAIA official seemingly clearing the way for another year. Also, the inability to find Crushel’s stats on Dakstats did not eliminate the need to locate them another way. The fuzzy circumstances should have provoked more investigation rather than simply accepting minimal information. Crushel should have been re-interviewed, or a deeper inquiry could have been made to officials at SCLSU. Despite a prior determination that Crushel was no longer eligible to play (he had been honored on the Eagles’ senior day in 2024), the Assistant AD instead focused on a segment of a sentence from an email to grant him an additional season.

Because Crushel was allowed on Faulkner’s roster, the Eagles’ promising season is now over.

One can certainly feel for Crushel. No athlete wants to see their playing career come to an end. While it’s also true that Faulkner made its own errors—particularly in its failure to fully investigate his prior season—Crushel absolutely, positively, unequivocally had to know he was ineligible. His oversight was a significant lapse in judgment, and now both he and his team are paying the price.

The lesson here is clear: in a system where every game counts and every decision matters, athletes must take ownership of their eligibility. There seems to be an increasing number of eligibility loopholes with players, especially following the seasons affected by COVID—EJ Cumbo recently was able to play parts of seven seasons in the NCAA DII. However, it appears that unlike Cumbo, Crushel manufactured his extra season knowing his eligibility was in question and should not have been on the diamond. Because of that, his teammates have had their playing time cut short so he could increase his.

Rank	School	State	Record	Last Wk	Prev Rk
1	LSU Shreveport Pilots	LA	51-0	4-0	1
2	Georgia Gwinnett Grizzlies	GA	49-4	3-0	2
3	Tennessee Wesleyan Bulldogs	TN	42-11	4-0	3
4	Cumberlands Patriots	KY	45-10	4-2	4
5	Reinhardt Eagles	GA	42-11	3-2	5
6	Taylor Trojans	IN	46-9	5-1	7
7	Loyola Wolf Pack	LA	38-15	3-1	8
8	Webber International Warriors	FL	41-13	4-0	9
9	Oklahoma Wesleyan Eagles	OK	46-9	3-2	6
10	Missouri Baptist Spartans	MO	40-9	3-0	10
11	Hope International Royals	CA	43-8	4-1	12
12	Kansas Wesleyan Coyotes	KS	39-13	4-0	16
13	William Carey Crusaders	MS	38-12	3-1	18
14	Cumberland Phoenix	TN	37-16	4-1	20
15	Arizona Christian Firestorm	AZ	39-14-1	2-2	15
16	Southeastern Fire	FL	41-13	2-2	13
17	Concordia Bulldogs	NE	40-11	3-2	14
18	Central Methodist Eagles	MO	35-13	4-0
19	Oakland City Mighty Oaks	IN	39-13	3-0	23
20	Keiser Seahawks	FL	35-15	3-2	*
21	Mid-America Christian Evangels	OK	38-15	1-2	17
22	Houston-Victoria Jaguars	TX	38-15	1-2	19
23	Columbia Cougars	MO	41-9	2-2	22
24	Johnson Royals	TN	35-16	2-2	25
25	Bellevue Bruins	NE	40-13	4-0
DROP	Faulkner Eagles	AL	33-12		11
DROP	Ottawa Braves	KS	38-14		21

NCAA DIII

With 21 straight wins and a third consecutive Centennial Conference championship under their belt, Johns Hopkins should be the undisputed No. 1 team in the country this week. As highlighted last week, the Blue Jays have dropped just three games all season — and two of those were to the teams currently ranked No. 2 and No. 3 in the national Top 25.

For most of the season, the top four have been a steady quartet: Johns Hopkins, Denison, Endicott, and UW-Whitewater. But make no mistake — Lynchburg, Trinity, and Salve Regina are all serious contenders with championship potential.

Lynchburg is a juggernaut at home, boasting a perfect 20–0 record on their turf. Offensively, the Hornets can explode — they've posted eye-popping totals of 18, 19, 21, and even 30 runs in single games. Pair that with lights-out starting pitching, airtight defense, and unparalleled team depth, and you’ve got a team built for a deep postseason run.

Trinity has been one of the most overlooked stories of the year. Despite being barely acknowledged in the Perfect Game preseason rankings, the Tigers have proven they belong among the elite — and they keep getting better. Currently riding a 15-game winning streak, Trinity just captured its 15th SCAC title with a win over Concordia (TX). Maddox McDonald has erupted in the second half of the season, leading the squad with 18 doubles, 18 stolen bases, and 15 HBPs — a stunning turnaround after hitting just .269 last year. Meanwhile, senior Brandon Nelson has gone from a .228 hitter to the team's offensive catalyst, now slashing .387 with a team-high 10 home runs.

Salve Regina started the season with a solid — but not spectacular — 14–7 record, which raised doubts about their title aspirations. They’ve since silenced the skeptics. The Seahawks have reeled off 14 straight wins and haven’t lost in nearly a month. Last week, they completed a sweep of WPI to finish 13–3 in NEWMAC regular season play, earning the top spot in the standings for the second straight year. Their pitching staff has been lights-out, led by ace Brayden Clark, who’s allowed just 50 hits in 67 ⅔ innings while striking out 92. The entire staff owns a sparkling 2.69 ERA with 355 strikeouts over 308 ⅓ innings — a dominant force on the hill.

Rank	School	State	Record	Last Wk	Prev Rk
1	Johns Hopkins Blue Jays	MD	39-3	36586	1
2	Denison Big Red	OH	32-5	36586	3
3	Endicott Gulls	MA	35-4	4-1	2
4	UW-Whitewater Warhawks	WI	34-4	3-1	4
5	Lynchburg Hornets	VA	35-6	36557	5
6	Trinity Tigers	TX	36-7	3-0	6
7	Salve Regina Seahawks	RI	39-7	36617	10
8	Salisbury Seagulls	MD	30-8	1-1	8
9	Kean Cougars	NJ	35-7	1-1	7
10	Case Western Reserve Spartans	OH	27-12-1	2-0	11
11	La Verne Leopards	CA	31-8	2-2	9
12	UW LaCrosse Eagles	WI	33-7	36617	13
13	Claremont-Mudd-Scripps Stags	CA	30-10	2-1	12
14	Penn State Harrisburg Lions	PA	31-9-1	36557	14
15	Rowan Profs	NJ	31-8	36557	15
16	Centre Colonels	KY	29-8	36557	16
17	Eastern Connecticut St. Warriors	CT	27-11	4-1	17
18	Webster Gorloks	MO	33-7	2-0	18
19	Pomona-Pitzer Sagehens	CA	27-13	3-1	20
20	Brockport Golden Eagles	NY	33-3-2	3-0	21
21	East Texas Baptist Tigers	TX	28-14	36586	25
22	Cortland State Red Dragons	NY	26-11	36586
23	Gustavus Adolphus Gusties	MN	33-7
24	Keystone Giants	PA	32-9	4-1
25	Concordia (TX) Tornados	TX	33-11	2-2	23
DROP	UT Dallas Comets	TX	32-6	0-0	22
DROP	Cal Lutheran Kingsmen	CA	27-13	2-2	24
DROP	Coe Kohawks	IA	27-11	0-3	19