College baseball week in review: Time to panic at Texas A&M, Florida and Virginia?
Texas A&M and Florida were ranked No. 1 and No. 6, respectively, in The Athletic's preseason top 25. After two weeks of league play, the two teams are a combined 1-11 in the SEC.
Florida no doubt has some issues, but its slow start can be attributed, in part, to pitching injuries and a brutal schedule that included series against Tennessee (road) and Georgia (home).
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Lefty Pierce Coppola was terrific in his first three starts but has missed the last three weekends due to an injury. And Liam Peterson, the Gators' Friday night starter, did not pitch against Georgia due to 'general soreness,' according to Jacob Rudner of Baseball America.
In their absence, the Gators struggled to get quality starts against the Bulldogs' potent offense. The three starters — Aidan King, Billy Barlow and Jake Clemente — combined to give up 18 hits and 15 earned runs in only nine innings.
Florida, which is 18-8 overall, hosts Florida State on Tuesday and then heads to Oxford to take on Ole Miss.
Texas A&M's situation appears to be far more dire. The Aggies, under first-year coach Michael Earley, are 11-12 overall and 0-6 in the league after getting swept by Alabama (home) and Vanderbilt (road). The starting pitching has been very good, but the offense — which is dealing with a few key injuries — has been anemic. A&M ranks last in the SEC in batting (.257), on-base percentage (.368) and runs scored (146) and 15th in slugging (.431). In three games against Vanderbilt, Texas A&M batters struck out 49 times.
Meanwhile, former Aggies coach Jim Schlossnagle is 19-3 overall and 5-1 in the SEC in his first season at rival Texas.
Texas A&M, Florida, and Kentucky were all CWS team in 2024. They're a combined 2-16 to start SEC play in 2025. 😬
To call the league a gauntlet would be an understatement.
— SEC Baseball (@SECbaseball) March 23, 2025
Over in the ACC, there is another national power off to a surprisingly slow start. Virginia, ranked No. 3 in the preseason, is 12-10 overall and 3-6 in the ACC. And unlike Florida and Texas A&M, the Cavaliers can't blame the schedule. They have played home series against Boston College and Duke and a road series at Cal — three solid but unranked teams.
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'I am obviously not succeeding about getting our players ready to play every day and play tough, competitive baseball up to the Virginia baseball standards, so that is on me,' coach Brian O'Connor said after a 6-2 loss to Richmond on Wednesday.
Georgia scored 40 runs in its weekend sweep over Florida and ranks first nationally with 269 runs in 26 games — one year after losing Charlie Condon, the 2024 winner of the Golden Spikes Award.
Wes Johnson and his staff reloaded through the transfer portal and found a gem in Ryland Zaborowski, a senior DH who is on his third team in five seasons. The Arizona native hit .305 with 10 home runs and 45 RBIs last year at Miami (Ohio), solid numbers but hardly anything to suggest he would star in the SEC. Well, in 23 games at Georgia, Zaborowski is hitting .467 with 14 home runs and 48 RBIs and leads the nation with a 1.708 OPS.
We had quite an eventful set of midweek games, with seven top 25 teams — including three of the top six — dropping a nonconference game. The headliner was ETSU handing top-ranked Tennessee its first loss of the season, 7-6 in extra innings on Tuesday. Yes, it was a huge upset, but this was no major fluke. The Buccaneers are 18-5 after taking two of three from Samford over the weekend. Elsewhere:
In their first matchup as SEC rivals, Texas took two of three from LSU in Austin.
All-America outfielder Max Belyeu was the star for the Longhorns on Sunday, going 2-for-4 with a home run and a triple. He is hitting .348 with five home runs and 18 RBIs. Dylan Volantis was brilliant out of the pen, throwing 3.1 innings of no-hit ball to pick up his fifth save.
LSU saw its 17-game winning streak snapped on Saturday night. The Tigers host Mississippi State next weekend, while Texas visits Missouri.
Georgia Tech improved to 20-4 overall and 7-2 in the ACC with a weekend sweep at Notre Dame by a combined score of 37-14. Shortstop Kyle Lodise went 4-for-5 with three home runs in Friday's 18-7 win and 3-for-5 with a home run in Saturday's 9-5 win.
Lodise, a first-year transfer from Division II Augusta (Ga.) University, is hitting .371 with a team-high nine home runs. Center fielder Drew Burress, the 2024 national freshman of the year, is hitting .340 with eight home runs.
The Yellow Jackets' schedule is about to toughen up considerably, starting with a home series against Clemson followed by a trip to ACC newcomer Stanford.
UCLA and Oregon are both 7-2 after their first three series in the Big Ten. UCLA has played at Maryland and hosted Nebraska and Indiana. Oregon, meanwhile, has yet to leave the West Coast; the Ducks swept USC on the road and then won two of three against both Minnesota and Rutgers in Eugene.
Iowa, too, is 7-2 in league play after sweeping Ohio State in Iowa City. The Hawkeyes will make one trip to the West Coast, an early May series at Washington.
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Nebraska, one of the league favorites in the preseason, is 2-7 in the Big Ten after going a combined 1-5 in consecutive weekends at UCLA (0-3) and USC (1-2). The Cornhuskers stayed on the West Coast between the two series and swept Pepperdine in a two-game midweek set.
On Tuesday, Nebraska caught Pepperdine with the hidden ball trick in the third inning of a 9-6 win.
HIDDEN BALL TRICK. 🪄
WORKED TO PERFECTION. pic.twitter.com/hGRKCnWxAf
— Nebraska Baseball (@HuskerBaseball) March 19, 2025
Arizona took two of three at West Virginia in a key early-season Big 12 series. The Wildcats won the opener 6-4 in 16 innings, dropped the second game 11-3 and won the finale 11-4.
Arizona has won 18 of its last 20 games and is tied with Kansas State atop the league standings at 5-1.
Kansas State swept Utah in Manhattan to open league play and then won two of three at Baylor over the weekend. The Cats are 14-4 since starting the season with one win in their first five games.
Cincinnati, which won a series at Duke on the opening weekend of the season, is 12-11 overall and 1-5 in the Big 12.
Cal made some history this weekend, and it had nothing to do with its first season playing in the ACC. The Bears swept Stanford at Sunken Diamond for the first time in school history. Cal had dropped its first two ACC series — at Virginia and vs. Duke — but is now 5-4 in the league after the weekend sweep.
The Cardinal had been rolling, with series wins over North Carolina and Duke to open their league slate. Freshman slugger Rintaro Sasaki, who hit three home runs last weekend against Duke, went 4-for-12 with one home run in the three games against Cal. He is hitting .337 with four home runs and 24 RBIs.
HISTORIC!!!!!
Cal completes first 3-game road sweep of Stanford on The Farm in recorded history. #GoBears pic.twitter.com/EeYa52g0ef
— Cal Baseball (@CalBaseball) March 23, 2025
• UC Irvine swept UCSB on the road in a crucial early-season Big West showdown. On Friday night, the Anteaters scored three earned runs in six innings off All-America pitcher Tyler Bremner. On Saturday, they touched up Jackson Flora for five earned runs in 3.1 innings. UC Irvine is 17-5 overall and 8-1 in league play. UCSB, which lost two of three at Hawaii two weeks ago, dropped to 4-5 in the Big West.
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• Virginia Tech picked up a nice series win over Louisville, winning the rubber match 11-4 on Sunday afternoon in Blacksburg. It was career win No. 600 for Hokies coach John Szefc. Tech is 16-8 overall and 4-5 in the ACC.
• North Carolina's Aidan Haugh came one out shy of a seven-inning no-hitter in the Tar Heels' 10-0 win at Boston College on Sunday. His final line: one hit, no runs, one walk and 11 strikeouts in seven innings.
• UTRGV was the first team to 10 conference wins. The Vaqueros are 17-5 overall and 10-2 in the Southland Conference.
• Two weeks into league play, Auburn is halfway to its SEC win total from last season. The Tigers improved to 19-5 overall and 4-2 in the league by taking two of three at Kentucky. A year ago, Auburn went 8-22 in the SEC and was one of two teams that didn't qualify for the league tournament.
• Clemson rallied from a 6-0 deficit to walk off Wake Forest 7-6 on Sunday, scoring the winning run on a wild pitch in the bottom of the ninth. It was a painful loss for the Demon Deacons, who missed an opportunity to record a road series win against a top-10 team.
• Yale freshman Jack Ohman has yet to allow an earned run in 25.1 innings of work. He has allowed 16 hits and has 30 strikeouts and seven walks.
(Photo of Jace Laviolette: Brianna Paciorka / USA Today Network via Imagn Images)
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