Baseball America Top 25: SEC lands 8 teams in first poll of regular season

Baseball America has released the first top 25 poll since the regular season opened over the weekend, and 8 SEC teams are in the poll.

The top 4 is Texas, Notre Dame, Oklahoma State and Virginia.

Vanderbilt dropped 2 out of 3 games to Oklahoma State after a dominating performance from the pitching staff in a 3-0 shutout win in Game 1 on Friday night. Junior Chris McElvain got the start on Opening Day and threw 4 shutout innings while striking out 10, the most punchouts by a Vanderbilt Opening Day starter in at least 15 years. Junior Spencer Jones went 5-for-12 (.419) on the weekend with three doubles.

Meanwhile in Starkville, the Diamond Dogs bounced back from dropping the first 2 games to break out for 16 hits, including their first two homers of the spring by Matt Corder and Tanner Leggett.

Arkansas took 2 out of 3 from Illinois State as Robert Moore, the consensus preseason All-American, reached base in all 3 games, slashing .364/.462/.909 with 3 runs scored, 4 extra-base hits, including 3 doubles and homer, 3 RBI and 2 walks.

Ole Miss, meanwhile, swept Charleston Southern to build some early momentum.

The SEC teams were ranked this way:
7. Vanderbilt
8. Mississippi State
9. Arkansas
10. Ole Miss
11. LSU
15. Georgia
17. Tennessee
19. Florida

🚨 NEW TOP 25 🚨

Where does your team rank after opening weekend? pic.twitter.com/l50bANl7DU

— Baseball America (@BaseballAmerica) February 21, 2022

Keith Farner

A former newspaper veteran, Keith Farner is a news manager for Saturday Down South.