College Baseball Foundation announces inaugural College Baseball Hall of Fame Power Poll

LUBBOCK, Texas – The College Baseball Foundation is proud to present the inaugural College Baseball Hall of Fame Power Poll, which will rank the top 25 teams in Division I college baseball each week.

The poll, which will be released weekly, is part of the CBF’s effort to promote the game of college baseball. This poll will consist of voters who are leaders of the College Baseball Foundation as well as members of the Hall of Fame and media members who have decades of experience in covering the game of college baseball.

In addition to the poll, the CBF annually presents some of the top awards in the country to honor the best players in college baseball. Among those awards are the Pitcher of the Year Award, the Brooks Wallace Award, which honors the nation’s top shortstop, the John Olerud Two-Way Player of the Year Award, which recognizes players who excel both on the mound/in the field and at the plate, and the Skip Bertman Coach of the Year Award.

For the inaugural College Baseball Hall of Fame Power Poll, the Texas Longhorns debut at No. 1. With a plethora of top-line pitching and most of its offense returning from a team that finished one game from the final series at the College World Series, Texas is the team to beat going into the season. The Longhorns received four of the six first place votes in the poll.

But the Longhorns will have plenty of company right on their heels, such as No. 2 Vanderbilt, which received the other first-place votes, No. 3 and defending national champion Mississippi State, No. 4 Ole Miss and No. 5 Arkansas. Mississippi State is seeking to become the first back-to-back College World Series champions since South Carolina in 2010 and 2011.

Also receiving votes: Duke (11), Louisiana Tech (11), Texas A&M (10), Long Beach State (6), Arizona State (2), Oregon (2), Oklahoma (1).