Wake Forest, Florida atop D1Baseball’s 2024 preseason rankings

The Demon Deacons and the Gators are considered the teams to beat in college baseball as the 2024 season approaches.

With the calendar turned to the start of 2024 and warmer weather theoretically on the way, college baseball season is quickly approaching. The first signs of life on the NCAA diamond came on Tuesday when D1Baseball released its preseason rankings of the 25 best teams this upcoming year.

The defending champion, LSU, is only six months removed from its College World Series title. However, the rankings think the leaders the Tigers lost, including the first two picks of last year’s MLB draft in pitcher Paul Skenes and outfielder Dylan Crews, are enough to drop LSU down to a humble fourth.

Two conference foes slot in ahead of the defending champions. Florida, the team that lost to LSU in the final series, sits second. The Gators also won the title in 2017 and were atop the national rankings with a 16-1 record in 2020 before the rest of the season was canceled due to COVID-19. Arkansas finished the regular season 39-15 last year, but a surprising 4-3 postseason campaign held them back from advancing to Omaha after TCU stunned them in their home regional.

All three of the top SEC teams are looking up at Wake Forest, however. The Demon Deacons lost to LSU in the 11th inning of a survive-and-advance game with a ticket to the championship series on the line.

Here are the full rankings:

Rank Team 2023 Record
1 Wake Forest 54-12
2 Florida 54-17
3 Arkansas 43-18
4 LSU 54-17
5 TCU 44-24
6 Vanderbilt 42-20
7 Oregon State 41-20
8 Texas A&M 38-27
9 Tennessee 44-22
10 Clemson 44-19
11 East Carolina 47-19
12 Duke 39-24
13 N.C. State 36-21
14 Virginia 50-15
15 North Carolina 36-24
16 Texas 42-22
17 UC Santa Barbara 35-20
18 Coastal Carolina 42-21
19 Alabama 43-21
20 Iowa 44-16
21 Texas Tech 41-23
22 UCLA 28-24-1
23 Northeastern 44-16
24 Kansas State 35-24
25 South Carolina 42-21