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Virginia Baseball Named 6th-Best Program in College Baseball by D1Baseball

Matt Newton

Steven Branscombe-Imagn Images

D1Baseball.com unveiled its Top 100 College Baseball Programs list this week and Virginia came in at No. 6 in the rankings. The leading college baseball media outlet re-ranks the top 100 programs in the country every few years, most recently ranking the best of the best in 2022. That year, UVA was ranked No. 15.

The Cavaliers' nine-position improvement from 15th in 2022 to 6th in 2024 was one of the biggest jumps on the list, particularly by a program that was already ranked in the top 25. Virginia was previously ranked No. 12 in 2019, No. 5 in 2017, and No. 2 in 2015 following the program's first-ever national title.

Aaron Fitt of D1Baseball explained a bit of the criteria for the ranking, which only slightly takes into account history and tradition, but places a higher emphasis on the current trajectory of each program. Here's what Fitt wrote:

"For the purpose of this exercise, we don’t care what happened in the 1970s or 80s, or even the 90s β€” that’s ancient history to a potential recruit in 2024. Tradition is nice, but it’s more important to establish a tradition of consistent winning in the last decade, and especially in the last five years. Our ultimate goal here is to identify the programs in the best shape right now, with an eye toward the next five to 10 years."

Virginia was the highest-ranked ACC program in the rankings, as the SEC swept the top five and had eight of the top 10. D1Baseball has the top five programs in college baseball as LSU, Tennessee, Florida, Vanderbilt, and Arkansas in that order.

Other ACC programs who cracked the top 100 were No. 10 Florida State, No. 11 Stanford, No. 12 North Carolina, No. 14 NC State, No. 18 Louisville, No. 24 Wake Forest, No. 28 Duke, No. 29 Clemson, No. 35 Miami, No. 46 Georgia Tech, No. 48 Notre Dame, No. 60 Virginia Tech, No. 78 Boston College, and No. 82 California.

Interestingly, there were five total schools from the Commonwealth of Virginia who made D1Baseball's list of top 100 programs in college baseball: No. 6 Virginia, No. 60 Virginia Tech, No. 64 VCU, No. 69 Liberty, and No. 84 Old Dominion.

Virginia has qualified for the NCAA Tournament in each of the four seasons and 18 of the last 20 years. The Cavaliers have made the College World Series in three of the last four years and have gone to Omaha seven times in program history, with each of those CWS appearances coming since 2009. Of course, Virginia also won its first-ever national championship in 2015 and was the national runner-up in 2014.

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Matt Newton
MATT NEWTON

Matt launched Virginia Cavaliers On SI in August of 2021 and has since served as the site's publisher and managing editor, covering all 23 NCAA Division I sports teams at the University of Virginia. He is from Downingtown, Pennsylvania and graduated from UVA in May of 2021.