NCAA Baseball and Softball Discussion Thread

[Mr. PrettyGood]

The softball season starts on February 5th and baseball begins on the 13th. Last year the Lady Longhorns snapped Oklahoma's championship streak (had won every year since the pandemic). LSU took home the men's College World Series trophy for the second time in three years. Feel free to ask me anything as I am very familiar with this level of the game, but the most important question is: how will your team do?

 

[Chris]

Can I trust you to keep me updated on how SFA is doing

 

[Chris]

Leave out any NCAA sanctions if they get hit with them, ignorance is bliss

 

[Mr. PrettyGood]

Can I trust you to keep me updated on how SFA is doing

With pleasure. I live near a Southland school (SELU), so I tend to keep tabs on that entire conference. I've even been to their conference championship in both sports- one time when the event wasn't even hosted within 10 miles of my house.

 

[Mr. PrettyGood]

Just to give everybody an idea of what's expected, here is one set of softball preseason rankings.

ESPN.com/USA Softball Collegiate Top 25 Poll​

• T1. Texas (56-12)
• T1. Texas Tech (54-14)
• 3. Oklahoma (52-9)
• 4. Tennessee (47-14)
• 5. Oregon (54-10)
• 6. Florida (48-17)
• 7. Florida State (49-12)
• 8. Arkansas (44-14)
• 9. Nebraska (43-15)
• 10. UCLA (55-13)
• 11. Texas A&M (48-11)
• 12. Clemson (48-14)
• 13. LSU (42-16)
• 14. South Carolina (44-17)
• 15. Georgia (35-23)
• 16. Alabama (40-23)
• 17. Stanford (42-13)
• 18. Arizona (48-13)
• 19. Duke (41-18)
• 20. Oklahoma State (35-20)
• 21. Virginia Tech (43-13)
• 22. Ole Miss (42-21)
• 23. Liberty (50-15)
• 24. Mississippi State (39-19)
• 25. Washington (35-19)

Others receiving votes: Arizona State, Virginia, Ohio State, Grand Canyon, Florida Atlantic, Auburn, UCF, BYU, Michigan, Missouri, Northwestern

 

[Mr. PrettyGood]

I had a hard time finding the coaches' poll for baseball, so here is the preseason top 25 from D1Baseball.com (which is where I get my scores from).

Rank	Team	2025 record	LY Rank
1	UCLA	48-18	5
2	LSU	53-15	1
3	Texas	44-14	17
4	Mississippi State	36-23	NR
5	Georgia Tech	41-19	24
6	Coastal Carolina	56-13	2
7	Arkansas	50-15	6
8	Louisville	42-24	6
9	Auburn	41-20	11
10	TCU	39-20	NR
11	North Carolina	46-15	9
12	Oregon State	48-16-1	4
13	Florida	39-22	NR
14	Tennessee	46-19	12
15	Georgia	43-17	19
16	Florida State	42-16	10
17	NC State	35-21	NR
18	Kentucky	31-26	NR
19	Clemson	45-18	23
20	Southern Miss	47-16	22
21	Wake Forest	39-22	NR
22	Miami	35-27	16
23	Vanderbilt	43-18	18
24	Arizona	44-21	7
25	Texas A&M	30-26	NR

I also offer my own rankings...

1) LSU
2) IT DOESN'T MATTER WHO COMES AFTER THE TIGERS!

 

[Mr. PrettyGood]

In a battle of top ten teams, Texas had two 5 run inning in their 15-10 victory of Nebraska. The Lady Cornhuskers threw three pitchers and left 6 runners on base, 3 of them in the 7th inning. Texas took the lead in the 2nd inning and kept it for the remainder of the game. This game was played n San Antonio as part of the UTSA Invitational.

 

[Mr. PrettyGood]

After a few surprises, the Softball Coaches’ Poll has had a bit of a shake up.

Rank/Team (First-Place Votes) | Points | Record | Prev.
1. Texas Tech (25) | 767 | 6-0 | 2
2. Texas (5) | 720 | 4-1 | 1
3. Tennessee (1) | 716 | 5-0 | 4
4. Florida | 655 | 5-0 | 6
5. Oklahoma| 655 | 3-1 | 3
6. UCLA | 614 | 5-0 | 7
7. Florida State | 580 | 5-0 | 8
8. Texas A&M | 4-1 | 11
9. Arkansas | 464 | 4-1 | 9
10. Alabama | 454 | 5-0 | 16
11. Nebraska | 427 | 3-2 | 10
12. LSU | 426 | 6-0 | 16
13. Stanford | 399 | 5-0
14. Virginia Tech | 378 | 5-0 | 19
15. Oregon | 355 | 2-3 | 5
16. South Carolina | 262 | 3-2 | 12
17. Arizona | 260 | 3-2 | 17
18. Clemson | 242 | 3-2 | 13
19. Mississippi State | 229 | 4-0 | 22
20. Georgia | 199 | 4-1 | 20
21. Ole Miss | 144 | 3-2 | 14
22. Duke | 135 | 4-1 | 23
23. Florida Atlantic | 96 | 5-0 | RV
24. Virginia | 93 | 4-1 | RV
25. Southeastern LA | 65 | 4-2 | RV
Others receiving votes: Oklahoma State (63), Grand Canyon (57), Arizona State (47), Michigan (36), Ohio State (20), Auburn (15), Michigan State (10), North Florida (6), Liberty (5), Nevada (4), Belmont (3).

Note: this is the first time that Southeastern Louisiana has been ranked.

 

[Mr. PrettyGood]

Baseball starts tonight. I’ll bet your stadium doesn’t have a song like this.

 

[Mr. PrettyGood]

Baylor beat New Mexico St 15-2 in seven innings, but that’s not the story. The story is Tyce Armstrong hitting 3 grand slams in that game.

 

[Mr. PrettyGood]

After 3 very impressive wins against Big 12 opponents, Oklahoma has moved into D1Baseball's Top 25. Of course, after three games, the big questions are generally in the realm of "Are we that good or are they that bad?" Or strike that and reverse it. Softball is more in the "What needs to be tweaked, what needs to be changed, and what needs to be torn down and replaced altogether?" realm.

 

[Mr. PrettyGood]

Turn your eyes to the west this weekend. UCLA and TCU (both top 15 in any recognized rankings) have a three game series in baseball and Stanford softball is hosting The Cardinal Classic featuring Stanford, Texas, Arizona, Boise State, and UC Santa Clara.

 

[Mr. PrettyGood]

From yesterday.

 

[Mr. PrettyGood]

After three weeks of softball, we’re starting to see some teams distinguish themselves by their records.

Dayton 7-1
North Carolina 14-0
Virginia 12-1
Texas Tech 16-1
Sacramento St 12-2
Penn St 13-2
Grand Canyon 16-0
Alabama 14-0
Florida 19-0
Tennessee 14-0
Wofford 13-1
Omaha 12-1
St. Bonaventure 0-13 (15 game losing streak going back to last year.

 

[Mr. PrettyGood]

After 3 weeks of baseball, some teams are distinguishing themselves via their records.

New Mexico 12-0
USC 11-0
Mercer 11-1
Utah Tech 11-1
UTSA 10-1
Charleston Southern 10-1
Southern Miss 10-1
Oregon 10-1
Hofstra 0-6
Albany 0-7
St. Peter's 0-7
Lafayette 0-7
Rhode Island 0-10
Marist 0-10
Northern Colorado

I intentionally left the ACC off to mention this: with conference play starting this weekend, the only team in this 16 team conference, only 5-6 Stanford has a losing record with 6 teams carrying a single loss.

The Ivy League has 3 out of 8 teams with 0 wins and 3-3 Yale is the only team with at least a .500 record.

The entire Northeastern Conference has a losing record with 6 of the 11 teams having 0 wins. Some of their teams start conference play this weekend.

Nobody in the SEC has a .500 or below record. Texas is 11-0 and 4 teams sit with over .900 winning percentages.