Collegiate Baseball Newspaper Poll – May 2

The defending national champions (35-8) swept a 3-game series at home against Auburn over the past weekend and have won five in a row and eight of their last nine games. The Gamecocks are tied for the lead in the Southeastern Conference with a 17-4 record. South Carolina has a superb 2.58 team ERA with 354 strikeouts and 135 walks — a better than 3:1 strikeout to walk ratio. On offense, the Gamecocks are averaging 6.5 runs per game while on defense fielders have committed only 38 errors in 43 games for a .977 fielding percentage.

Virginia, ranked No. 1 the previous five weeks, slipped to second after beating Boston College two of three games.

Poll Notes: Several other teams have been hot. Kent St. has won 7 in a row, Vanderbilt 6 straight and Florida 6 consecutive. In key series over the past weekend, Texas beat Oklahoma two of three, Oregon St. won two of three at UCLA, Clemson beat Georgia Tech. two of three, Arizona St. knocked off Stanford two of three, Florida St. beat Miami (Fla.) two of three, Hawaii beat Fresno St. two of three, and Georgia beat Arkansas two of three. Two teams fell out of the top 30 in Stanford (2-3 last week) and St. John’s (2-3). Two new teams in the poll include Arizona (27-16), which swept a 3-game series against Southern California, and Coastal Carolina (30-15), which leads the Big South Conference with a 14-4 record and has won five games in a row.

The Collegiate Baseball newspaper poll is the oldest college baseball poll. Its birth took place during the 1957 college baseball season.