Here's Where LSU Baseball Ranks Prior to SEC Tournament
After game one of their series against South Carolina where the Gamecocks clawed back from down 5-3 to win in the bottom of the ninth inning, there were a lot of college baseball fans saying LSU isn't locked into a top-eight seed. They ended up winning their next two games, but some fans still aren't convinced. Despite that, it appears the people who make the rankings think they're still the top dogs.
Jared JonesMatthew Hinton
D1 Baseball - No. 1
D1 Baseball decided to keep the Tigers at No. 1 despite their loss to the Gamecocks in game one. It may have been a bad loss, but no other team in the top-four went better than 2-1 on the week, meaning the Tigers got to keep their top spot.
Baseball America - No. 1
Baseball America also has the Tigers holding onto their top spot in the rankings after a 2-1 week. Their former No. 2 team, the Auburn Tigers, went 2-2 on the weekend and fell all the way down to No. 7. Everyone else in the top-five went 2-1 and didn't do enough to leapfrog the Tigers.
RPI - No. 8
Despite the series win, the Tigers remain at No. 8 in the RPI. Their loss to South Carolina impacted them much more in the RPI than the other polls, but they're still able to hold onto that crucial top-eight ranking.
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Even though D1 Baseball and Baseball America think LSU is the best team in the county, I don't think they'll earn the one seed (unless they win the SEC Tournament). Their RPI and strength of schedule are a bit lower than some of the other teams, but I think it's pretty safe to say they're a lock for a top-eight seed.
Related: Head Coach Beth Torina Reacts to End of LSU Softball Season
Related: Everything Angel Reese Said After Loss to Caitlin Clark
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Yahoo
35 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Dabo Swinney's faith in QB Cade Klubnik has paid off as No. 4 Clemson eyes national title run
CLEMSON, S.C. — Cade Klubnik read the comments on social media. He heard the chatter around him, about how he simply wasn't good enough to be the starting quarterback for the Clemson Tigers. He heard fans clamoring for coach Dabo Swinney to tap the transfer portal and find a quality replacement. It was all coming to a head after Klubnik's sophomore season in 2023, a year in which the Tigers struggled early but closed with five straight wins to finish 9-4. While that might be considered a good season for some schools, it was a down year for Clemson, snapping a streak of 12 straight double-digit win seasons and leaving the Tigers out of the College Football Playoff for the second straight year. There were questions about whether Clemson's run was over, and much of the blame fell on Klubnik's shoulders after throwing just 19 touchdown passes with nine interceptions that season. 'Everybody kind of told me I sucked, and wasn't very good,' Klubnik said. 'A lot of people wanted me out of Clemson.' About two weeks after the Tigers' 38-35 win over Kentucky in the Gator Bowl, Klubnik was still relatively uncertain about his status at Clemson and that's when Swinney called Klubnik into his office and put any speculation about his future to rest. As he sat across from Klubnik, Swinney told him directly: 'I believe in you.'. 'To have somebody that I look up to and believe in, tell me that he believes in me, it just filled me with confidence,' Klubnik said. 'He could have gone and done what a lot of other coaches would do (and find a transfer quarterback), but he didn't.'' Klubnik called it a moment in life he'll never forget. He left Swinney's office more confident than ever, and eager to reward his coach for the faith he showed in him. And he did just that. Klubnik piled up more than 4,000 yards from scrimmage and 42 touchdowns last season while leading Clemson to its eighth ACC championship in 10 years with an MVP performance that included four touchdowns in a dramatic 34-31 win over SMU in the title game. The victory assured the Tigers a return to the playoff, where they lost 38-24 to Texas in the first round. Now Klubnik enters his final season at Clemson as a likely Heisman Trophy candidate and the fourth-ranked Tigers are expected to compete for a national championship. 'When you sign up to do this, whether you're a coach at this level or certainly play the quarterback position, there's a lot of criticism,' Swinney said. 'I just knew there was going to be a lot of noise. He's a young person and I just felt like it was important that I let him know that that I fully believed in him. I didn't want him worrying about me going out and getting another guy. I wanted him to know, hey, you're my guy.' Added Swinney, 'I told him if it don't work out, then I'm going down with you.' Swinney has been around college football for more than three decades and has won two national titles at Clemson, so he knows a thing or two about player development. He said one of the most difficult parts of coaching college football in today's world is having the patience to develop a quarterback while remaining competitive. Swinney saw enough in Klubnik after his sophomore season to believe he had plenty of potential. 'You know, this is a developmental game,' Swinney said. 'We forget that because now we're in this world where if you're not great as a freshman it's, oh well, you stink. And then you move on to the next guy.' Tigers wide receiver Antonio Williams, who figures to be Klubnik's primary target in the passing game, said off the field his quarterback is 'kind of laid back and goofy.' But Williams said Klubnik was all business last season. 'He's definitely growing up a lot,' Williams said. 'When it comes to leadership, he's definitely been more vocal and he has the respect of all the guys in the locker room. So when he speaks, everybody listens. That respect has gone a long way for him.' Swinney called Klubnik an 'amazing human being' and he continues to believe in him, perhaps on a run to the Tigers' first national title since 2018. 'He's got a lot of great days ahead,' Swinney said. 'And you need a little luck, you know. I know everybody wants to make all these predictions and things like that, but you predict your way in anything. You gotta go do it. I know this if if that guy stays healthy, we will have a chance. He's gonna always give you a chance.'
Yahoo
an hour ago
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Why Auburn is completely justified in claiming 4 more national titles
The Auburn Tigers just closed the gap on the University of Alabama in the national title debate, and they didn't have to take a single snap to do it. Claiming four new national titles in one swoop, in the year 2025, has to rank as Auburn's greatest victory since the Kick Six. Thing is, based on the precedent already set down by that school across the state, Auburn is completely justified in claiming most, if not necessarily all four of the new titles. What's good for the Tide is good for the Tigers, after all. 'For too long, Auburn has chosen a humble approach to our program's storied history — choosing to recognize only Associated Press national championships,' Auburn athletic director John Cohen told On3 in announcing the new title windfall. Two banners, for the 1957 and 2010 seasons, hang in Jordan-Hare Stadium, and prior to this week the Tigers also acknowledged the 1913, 1983 and 1993 seasons as meeting national championship qualifications. [Join or create a Yahoo Fantasy Football league for the 2025 NFL season] Effective immediately, Auburn will now claim the 1910, 1914, 1958 and 2004 seasons as national championship ones, because, as Cohen notes, the Tigers' recognitions 'now align with the well-established standard used by the NCAA's official record book and our peers across the nation.' Auburn can justify the new rings on two fronts: first, because pre-21st-century college football was a chaotic nest of competing rankings and ad hoc justifications, and second, because Alabama already went there. Reason #1: Nobody knows anything The Tigers are taking advantage of 20th century college football's inherent absurdity. Then as now, the soul of college football lies in argument, the furious and fiery debate over unanswerable questions of strength and worth. But for all the good that the College Football Playoff and its predecessor postseason series have brought the game, they've robbed us of the debate of which team really would've come out on top in a winner-take-all matchup. When you determine your postseason rankings via polls rather than games, there's ample room for debate … and ample territory to claim championships on your own a century after the fact. Multiple contemporaneous and after-the-fact polls have attempted to make sense of college football's anything-goes era, some with far more statistical rigor and validity than others. Still, finding a poll that breaks your way is like finding a $100 bill on the ground; you might not be entitled to it, but you're going to keep it anyway. Auburn does have history in its corner. The Auburn of the 1910s was a fearsome unit, led by a diminutive Irishman named Mike Donahue and featuring players with spectacular names like Fatty Warren, Baby Taylor and Moon Ducote. In the three national championship seasons Auburn now claims, the Tigers won 22 games, lost one and tied one. Auburn and Alabama weren't playing at that time due to hard feelings on both sides, which was good news for the Tide, a mediocre 15-11 over the same stretch. The 1958 team played under a total blackout — no television, no bowl appearances — but still managed to go 9-0-1. That was only good enough for fourth in the final rankings, behind LSU (10-0), Iowa (7-1-1), and Army (8-0-1). The 2004 team went 13-0 but was not included in the two-team BCS, losing out on a berth by mere percentage points to USC and Oklahoma. Auburn and Oklahoma were tied going into the regular season's final week, but because Auburn didn't beat Alabama badly enough in the Iron Bowl, winning by 'only' eight points, Oklahoma moved ahead only to get shellacked by USC in the Orange Bowl. (Incidentally, I cover all this in my new — and apparently already dated — book Iron In The Blood: How the Alabama vs. Auburn Rivalry Shaped the Soul of the South, on sale next Tuesday. Feel free to correct the appropriate passages by hand.) Reason #2: Alabama did it first If you're mad at Auburn for claiming four new titles, you might want to reserve a good measure of your scorn for their rival. Back in the 1980s, an Alabama sports information director went diving in the record books and in one swoop, awarded Alabama five pre-Bear Bryant-era titles. These range from defensible and acceptable to absurd, like the 1941 season where Alabama went 9-2 and finished 20th (!) in the AP poll … but ranked No. 1, tied with Minnesota, in a single, much smaller poll. Nothing Auburn did Tuesday is anywhere near as egregious as that, and yet the 1941 team remains canonized on Alabama's Walk of Champions in front of Bryant-Denny Stadium. Now, granted, there's the question of an incredibly slippery slope here. If Auburn is going to claim a national title for 2004, why can't Utah — which also went undefeated at 12-0 — also claim one? Why couldn't 2017 Central Florida or 2023 Florida State, which, like 2004 Auburn, were both left out of the postseason dance despite going undefeated? For that matter, why can't Alabama claim the 1966 title and jump up to 19? That season, Alabama went 11-0 with six shutouts, but finished behind two teams — Notre Dame and Michigan State — that went 9-0-1 and played to a tie in late November. The suspicion, then and now, was that pollsters of the day were punishing the Crimson Tide for the state of Alabama's woeful record on civil rights in the turbulent 1960s. (Politics and sports have always intertwined.) Yes, Auburn's ring-grab could well set off a new wave of schools retroactively seeking to claim national titles won by their great-grandfathers. We could see new banners hanging in stadiums all across the country as enterprising researchers whip up dissertation-length justifications for why their school deserves titles from the days before cars or TV. But so what? We now have in place a means of determining, once and for all, a season's indisputable national champion. And as college football sins go, a bit of reapportioned valor ranks pretty low on the list. We've got to hold onto something to argue about, after all.
NBC Sports
an hour ago
- NBC Sports
Dabo Swinney's faith in QB Cade Klubnik has paid off as No. 4 Clemson eyes national title run
CLEMSON, S.C. — Cade Klubnik read the comments on social media. He heard the chatter around him, about how he simply wasn't good enough to be the starting quarterback for the Clemson Tigers. He heard fans clamoring for coach Dabo Swinney to tap the transfer portal and find a quality replacement. It was all coming to a head after Klubnik's sophomore season in 2023, a year in which the Tigers struggled early but closed with five straight wins to finish 9-4. While that might be considered a good season for some schools, it was a down year for Clemson, snapping a streak of 12 straight double-digit win seasons and leaving the Tigers out of the College Football Playoff for the second straight year. There were questions about whether Clemson's run was over, and much of the blame fell on Klubnik's shoulders after throwing just 19 touchdown passes with nine interceptions that season. 'Everybody kind of told me I sucked, and wasn't very good,' Klubnik said. 'A lot of people wanted me out of Clemson.' About two weeks after the Tigers' 38-35 win over Kentucky in the Gator Bowl, Klubnik was still relatively uncertain about his status at Clemson and that's when Swinney called Klubnik into his office and put any speculation about his future to rest. As he sat across from Klubnik, Swinney told him directly: 'I believe in you.'. 'To have somebody that I look up to and believe in, tell me that he believes in me, it just filled me with confidence,' Klubnik said. 'He could have gone and done what a lot of other coaches would do (and find a transfer quarterback), but he didn't.'' Klubnik called it a moment in life he'll never forget. He left Swinney's office more confident than ever, and eager to reward his coach for the faith he showed in him. And he did just that. Klubnik piled up more than 4,000 yards from scrimmage and 42 touchdowns last season while leading Clemson to its eighth ACC championship in 10 years with an MVP performance that included four touchdowns in a dramatic 34-31 win over SMU in the title game. The victory assured the Tigers a return to the playoff, where they lost 38-24 to Texas in the first round. Now Klubnik enters his final season at Clemson as a likely Heisman Trophy candidate and the fourth-ranked Tigers are expected to compete for a national championship. 'When you sign up to do this, whether you're a coach at this level or certainly play the quarterback position, there's a lot of criticism,' Swinney said. 'I just knew there was going to be a lot of noise. He's a young person and I just felt like it was important that I let him know that that I fully believed in him. I didn't want him worrying about me going out and getting another guy. I wanted him to know, hey, you're my guy.' Added Swinney, 'I told him if it don't work out, then I'm going down with you.' Swinney has been around college football for more than three decades and has won two national titles at Clemson, so he knows a thing or two about player development. He said one of the most difficult parts of coaching college football in today's world is having the patience to develop a quarterback while remaining competitive. Swinney saw enough in Klubnik after his sophomore season to believe he had plenty of potential. 'You know, this is a developmental game,' Swinney said. 'We forget that because now we're in this world where if you're not great as a freshman it's, oh well, you stink. And then you move on to the next guy.' Tigers wide receiver Antonio Williams, who figures to be Klubnik's primary target in the passing game, said off the field his quarterback is 'kind of laid back and goofy.' But Williams said Klubnik was all business last season. 'He's definitely growing up a lot,' Williams said. 'When it comes to leadership, he's definitely been more vocal and he has the respect of all the guys in the locker room. So when he speaks, everybody listens. That respect has gone a long way for him.' Swinney called Klubnik an 'amazing human being' and he continues to believe in him, perhaps on a run to the Tigers' first national title since 2018. 'He's got a lot of great days ahead,' Swinney said. 'And you need a little luck, you know. I know everybody wants to make all these predictions and things like that, but you predict your way in anything. You gotta go do it. I know this if if that guy stays healthy, we will have a chance. He's gonna always give you a chance.'
