Non-Big 12 Baseball: SEC teams continue to dominate proceedings
Outside of the Big 12 Conference, the conferences most associated with college baseball dominance come from the east. As of March 9, the top 25 rankings consist of 16 teams from either the Southeastern Conference or the Atlantic Coastal Conference. Eight of the teams in the top 10 are from either conference.
LSU, Tennessee, Florida, Vanderbilt, Arkansas and reigning national champion Ole Miss make up the top 10 teams out of the SEC. Wake Forest and Louisville, both out of the ACC, help make up the top 10, with TCU and Stanford being the only two top 10 teams not in an eastern conference.
Top-ranked LSU dominated their opponents in the past week, ending three of four games by run-rule. The dominance should continue as the Tigers have a three game home series with Samford.
Second ranked Stanford will open up Pac-12 play, and is looking to bounce back after a 10-5 loss at home to Santa Clara. They will open up conference competition with unranked USC who has had a back and forth start thus far.
The Pac-12 is not the only conference opening league play this week. The ACC starts play this week and Wake Forest will take on Duke after losing for the first time in a 13-11 upset to Coastal Carolina on Tuesday.
The biggest series of the weekend also comes out of the ACC as unbeaten Virginia travels to North Carolina. The Tar Heels enter the weekend on a seven-game winning streak, all of them at home. Virginia has not traveled since its only tournament appearance in mid-February.
Boshamer Stadium should be rocking in Chapel Hill, and it will create a hostile environment for the Cavaliers to come into.
Elsewhere, in the American conference the East Carolina Pirates find themselves in the rankings after an early season in which they defeated North Carolina twice. They face a non-conference weekend series with Liberty, a team that is off to a 7-5 start.
In the Big Ten, the Iowa Hawkeyes are coming off of a weekend tournament sweep in the South Alabama Invitational. Iowa caught national attention in February when they upset top-ranked LSU at the Round Rock Classic. They will get another big test this weekend when they travel to Lubbock to take on Texas Tech, who dropped out of the rankings after struggling in the Shriner’s Classic.
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