ACC baseball is as strong as any in the country this year

The SEC is home to the nation’s top team in 2022 with Tennessee having an unreal season, but the conference as a whole is neck-and-neck with the ACC for top billing. Sixteen of the top 25 teams by RPI hail from one of the two conferences with each conference claiming eight squads.

One could easily make the argument that the ACC is the superior conference in baseball this season. (Hey, look! I’m about to do it!)

Among the 31 Division I conferences, only the ACC and SEC have a conference RPI over .5600, with the conferences checking in at remarkably similar 0.5745 and 0.5746 figures, respectively. The Big XII is a distant third at 0.5588.

Looking at just Quadrant 1 (RPI Top 50) games, the ACC holds bragging rights with a .484 winning percentage over 310 games compared to the SEC’s .424 winning percentage over 257 games. It’s really the middle of the ACC that shows the strength of the conference. Remove the best (Notre Dame, 11-4; Tennessee, 12-2) and worst (Boston College, 5-21; Ole Miss, 3-8) performers in Q1 games from each conference and the disparity in depth between the ACC (.498 W%) and SEC (.405) is really shown.

Head-to-head, the ACC has a 9-5 record against the SEC this year. One of those ACC losses is North Carolina’s 15-2 loss to South Carolina, which is perfectly acceptable. The feather-in-the-cap wins for the ACC are Georgia Tech’s series win over Georgia (RPI #9) and Louisville’s win over Vanderbilt (RPI #4). Going the other way, Florida (RPI #12) has a series win over Miami.

Of course, the real determination of the conference pecking order will come in the NCAA Tournament when there are bound to be more than a few SEC vs ACC matchups, but as it stands right now, the two conferences are head and shoulders above the rest of the national college baseball landscape.

Current ACC RPI standings:

7. Miami (35-12, 17-7)

8. Virginia Tech (33-10, 14-8)

11. Notre Dame (28-10, 13-8)

13. Louisville (33-13-1, 15-8-1)

14. Virginia (34-12, 14-10)

18. Clemson (31-17, 9-14)

23. Wake Forest (33-14-1, 11-12-1)

25. Florida State (28-17, 13-11)

27. North Carolina (27-18, 10-14)

29. Georgia Tech (27-21, 12-15)

31. NC State (30-15, 12-11)

59. Pittsburgh (26-19, 12-11)

99. Boston College (19-30, 5-22)

106. Duke (20-26, 9-15)