Northern Sun D2 College Baseball Poll – 3/17/09

Southern Arkansas has claimed the top spot in 2 of the 3 national Division 2 College Baseball polls.  This gives them the #1 position in the Northern Sun Baseball Division 2 Composite Poll for the 2nd week in a row.  Grand Valley State grabbed the top spot in this weeks National College Baseball Writers Association poll which moved them from #5 in last weeks NSB poll into the #2 position.

There continues to be a wide variance in the rankings in the 3 polls each week.

Biggest Variances –

• There is a big difference in views on Central Missouri who is ranked #3, #16 & #25 (#10 in NSB)
• Sonoma State also saw diverging opinions being ranked #6, #11 & #29 (#12 in NSB)

Biggest Gainers –

• Georgia College & State moved up from not being ranked all the way to #9 in the NSB poll
• California – San Diego had a great week against Cal State – Stanislaus and moved from #25 to #8

Biggest Decliners –

• Cal State – Stanislaus fell from being the #1 ranked team in the CBN poll to #26 and from #2 in the CBN Composite Poll all the way down to a tie for 19th
• Nova Southeastern also dropped from #7 to a tie for 19th

This week does mark the first week of a Northern Sun Conference team making the Northern Sun Baseball Poll as Concordia University of St. Paul claimed a tie for #28.  It was interesting that all 3 national polls had a different team at #18 that wasn’t mentioned in the other polls and that this caused a 3 way tie for the last spot.

 

CBN – College Baseball News; Ping – Ping!Baseball; NCBWA – National College Baseball Writers Association; NSB Rank – Northern Sun Baseball Composite Poll; Comb Pts – Combined points in the composite rankings; LW – Last week’s composite ranking

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NCBWA Regional Poll – 3/17/09

The National College Baseball Writers Association has published their weekly Division 2 college baseball regional polls – NCBWA Regional Poll  As I explained last week –

This poll is a good barometer to watch as the top 6 teams in the Rocky Mountain (RMAC) and Northern Sun Conferences (NSIC) will face each other in the NCAA Regional Tournament at the end of the season to see which team will advance to the NCAA Division 2 National Tournament.  The NSIC and RMAC conference tournament winners each receive an automatic bid to the NCAA Regional.

Mesa State maintains the top spot in the poll as they garnered 6 of the 7 first place votes.  This is a little confusing to me as last week there were just 6 voters and Mesa State received all 6 first place votes.  During the week Colorado State – Pueblo had a dominating 15-3 win over Concordia which I wrote about here – Concordia’s Ugly Loss – Regional Implications.  How anyone could have given Concordia a first place vote over Mesa or Pueblo after that game during the week isn’t paying attention. 

Just to give you some idea of the RMAC teams dominance – Mesa State is “averaging” over 12 runs scored per game in 25 games played to date.  Pueblo has won 14 of their past 15 contests and in the 13 games since Feb 28th has scored less than 8 runs only twice.

Northern Sun teams head into Conference play this weekend so it’s interesting to see how they are rated.  According to these voters the expected order of finish might be –

1. Concordia
2. St. Cloud State
3. Wayne State
4. Southwest Minnesota State
5. Minnesota Duluth
6. Minnesota State
7. Upper Iowa

When I see that list a couple things jump out at me.  First of all, after Minnesota Duluth’s ugly 34-1 loss to SMSU this week (and 2nd game 9-8 loss) I have no reason to believe that the Bulldogs will finish that high.  The other team that seems missing is Winona State as I’ve seen enough good from them to think that they should be in the top 7 teams.