Oregon drops out of D1 Baseball top-25 following rocky weekend
The Oregon baseball program entered the season with a ton of buzz following a promising 2022 campaign.
The Ducks were a unanimous top-25 selection in the various preseason polls and got off to a hot start to the year with a four-game sweep over Xavier during the opening weekend.
But Mark Wasikowski’s squad experienced a substantial setback last weekend. Oregon found itself on the wrong end of a three-game sweep at the hands of UC Santa Barbara in Eugene and now sits at 4-3 on the year.
As a result, the Ducks have dropped out of the top-25 of D1 Baseball’s updated rankings. Previously, they sat at No 25. They are the only team that dropped out of this week’s rankings and were leapfrogged by Florida State, which surged all the way to No. 16.
The Gauchos ambushed Oregon ace Logan Mercado with a seventh-inning grand slam en route to a 6-2 win on Friday. During a Saturday doubleheader, UCSB notched a 10-0 win in the opener, and 4-1 victory during the nightcap.
Following the doubleheader, Wasikowski noted that the Ducks are going to need to make some rapid improvements at the plate if they want to bounce back quickly.
“There’s not a lot that you don’t look to improve on,” Wasikowski said. “Two-strike hitting, being ready to hit fastballs when you get good fastball counts, plenty of things. The blame isn’t with players only. It’s with coaches, with preparation. Obviously, we need to improve.”
The Ducks will look to get back on track this week with a four-game series against San Diego at PK Park in Eugene. They will open the series on Thursday at 3:05 p.m. PT.
Elsewhere in the Pac-12, just two other programs in the conference cracked the D1 Baseball top-25. Stanford (5-2) swept Rice at home over the weekend and held strong at No. 2.
UCLA (5-2) was competitive in a three-game series at No. 7 Vanderbilt, but ultimately lost a pair of games and remained at No. 1 as a result.
Updated D1Baseball Top 25
- LSU (6-1)
- Stanford (5-2)
- Tennessee (6-2)
- Ole Miss (6-1)
- Wake Forest (9-0)
- Florida (7-1)
- Vanderbilt (5-3)
- Arkansas (5-2)
- East Carolina (5-1)
- TCU (4-3)
- Virginia Tech (5-2)
- Oklahoma State (4-3)
- North Carolina (4-3)
- Louisville (6-1)
- Texas A&M (4-3)
- Florida State (6-1)
- UCLA (5-2)
- Maryland (3-4)
- Virginia (7-0)
- Alabama (8-0)
- NC State (7-0)
- Miami (7-1)
- South Carolina (8-0)
- Texas Tech (8-0)
- Southern Miss (5-2)
