Bo's Baseball Bites: A National Look Around At The 2025 College Baseball Season So Far, So Good

Midseason Trends Indicate Another Great March to Omaha

for the MCWS in June

DALLAS – It almost is hard to believe, and no, it’s not April Fools.

Virtually every team in NCAA Division 1 baseball has completed at least half its 56-game regular season, and others are seeking to add D1 opponents to help the always-vital Rating Percentage Index (RPI) used by the NCAA Selection Committee to determine the 64-team NCAA Championship field, culminating with the NCAA World Series in June in Omaha, NE.

And to no one’s surprise, the Southeastern Conference remains the dominant force as April activity begins, with as many as 13 SEC teams among the NCBWA, D1Baseball and USA Today Coaches Top 25 polls on any given week.

For the last four weeks, though, at least four SEC teams have commanded positions among the Top Five nationally, and through games of March 31: Tennessee (26-2 overall), Arkansas (26-3), Georgia (28-2), Texas (23-3) and LSU (26-3) have combined marks of 129-13 and a solid, .908 winning percentage.

The SEC race indicates the closeness of these NCAA challengers as well. Through the first three weeks of SEC competition, there are 11 teams within four games in the standings behind 8-1 conference starters Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee, and Texas. SEC teams also have built a hearty resume for the RPI with a nation-leading 256-47 record against all Division 1 non-conference foes for a .845 winning percentage.

But, several conferences with ample league contest schedules are moving even more quickly toward the final two months of the regular campaign and critical conference tournaments.

The always-feisty Southland Conference is 15 games into its circuit slate, with 12-3 UTRGV (University of Texas-Rio Grande Valley) forging ahead of 10-2 upstart Houston Christian (which already has had its league bye week) and Southeastern Louisiana at 9-2 (with one league game cancelled),

The Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) has jumped out in similar fashion, with Georgia Tech standing at 8-4 in conference play (22-6 overall, under recently-announced retiring head coach Danny Hall), just ahead of Duke, Virginia Tech and Wake Forest, all at 7-5 in the ACC’s most well-traveled season due to the additions of former Pac-12 Conference members California and Stanford.

Even the snowbound Northeast Conference is about to enter its fifth week of three-game circuit series.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, the expanded Big 12 Conference, with newcomers Arizona, Arizona State and Utah in the 2025 fold, is just through three series, with no foreseeable open league weekend prior to the May 20-25 Phillips 66 Championship at Arlington’s Globe Life Field.

The cold-weather Horizon League also is nine games deep into its ’25 intra-conference slate and hoping for brief April showers around weekend games.

A recent example of weather trouble: LSU and Mississippi State battled through cool and wet conditions of their Thursday-Saturday series in Baton Rouge, LA, with the Friday and Saturday tussles both delayed by weather and going into the wee hours of Saturday and Sunday mornings, game three starting at 9:36 pm and ending at 1:44 a.m. (CDT) after the two teams combined for 27 hits and 25 runs.

With conference races heating up and teams such as Kansas State (8-1 to start Big 12 action); No. 4 nationally Florida State (7-2) taking early control of the ACC race ahead of Georgia Tech; nationally-ranked Southern Miss (7-2) at No. 12 in the Sun Belt lead; and Iowa and UCLA (both 10-2) grabbing early Big Ten laurels, there might just be a few seldom-seen entrants for the 2025 NCAA World Series.

Individually, there are also some mid-year candidates vying for the prestigious Dick Howser Trophy presented by The Game Headwear, the Golden Spikes Award, the NCBWA Stopper of the Year, and other key national kudos.

Among the national hitting leaders, Konni Durschlag of High Point leads the country with a .486 average through March 31, ahead of Alex Lodise of Florida State at .466, Kyle Fossum of Youngstown State at .465, Kade Lewis of Wake Forest at .465, and others flirting with the almost unreachable .500 batting norm.

Power hitters Grant Gallagher of East Tennessee State (which broke Tennessee’s school-record 22-game winning streak last month) has hammered an NCAA-high 15 home runs, ahead of Ryland Zaborowski of Georgia with 14 round-trippers, and eight others with 13 each, possibly headed toward a 30-homer campaign.

On the mound, UTSA’s Robert Orloski, Florida State’s Joey Volini and Georgia Tech’s Mason Patel are off to blazing 7-0 starts, while Yale freshman Jack Ohman has not allowed an earned run in 30 1/3 innings. WKU’s Jack Bennett has been equally unhittable with a 0.86 earned run average (ERA).

Stay tuned, fans, we’re just getting started and not even halfway there yet for many conference races. The home stretch of this annual roller-coaster ride could be even more interesting, as teams such as slow starters Texas A&M (preseason No. 1), Mississippi State, and South Carolina, among others, seek to get their diamond games in gear and use their home field advantages to gather momentum for some late-season charges.

The SEC won't have to worry about making Hoover, all 16 will now for the first completely single elimination event. However, it's no given the NCAA will be as generous with the baseball bids as they were with the men's basketball ones.

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Bo Carter is the Executive Director of the National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association (NCBWA) and is a long time professional in sports media and information. He is a graduate of Vanderbilt University and has plied his trade in the Southeastern Conference, the Southwest Conference, and the Big 12 Conference. In addition to his NCBWA duties, he also serves as a consultant and columnist for the National Football Foundation. Follow the NCBWA, which produces ranking polls for D1, D2, and D3, as well as naming All America teams at both the D1 and D2 levels and the Dick Howser Trophy (presented each year in Omaha at the Men’s College World Series) at @NCBWA. If you’re a college baseball fan, you don’t have to be media to be a member, check them out at ncbwa.com and join today!