After seeing their six-game winning streak snapped by their archrivals, the
Grand Canyon University Club Baseball team dropped to No. 7 in the latest National Club Baseball Association (NCBA) Rawlings Division I Poll. It's the first time this season that the Lopes didn't maintain or improve on their national ranking, and it's a drop of four spots from the No. 3 ranking that the Lopes held for four straight weeks in the poll. On the positive side, though, it is the fourth straight time that the Lopes have been ranked in the NCBA Top 10 – the first time they've enjoyed that kind of national respect in three years.
The Lopes seemed destined to keep their top-3 ranking intact for a third straight poll after cruising to 20-4 and 13-9 wins over then-ranked Arizona State University in the first two games of their three-game Southern Pacific South Conference series in Tempe. However, sloppy GCU fielding helped the Sun Devils come from behind twice in Game 3 to salvage a 7-6 victory, which also kept ASU alive in the race for the SoPac South title. The loss halted GCU's six-game winning streak overall and tagged them with their only loss to date in conference play.
The Lopes (17-8 overall, 8-1 SoPac South) will enter their final SoPac South series with a two-game lead over the Sun Devils in the standings, which means GCU's magic number to wrap up their third consecutive SoPac South regular season title is two (any combination of GCU wins and ASU losses that add up to two). Standing in the way of that is Northern Arizona University, who will come to
Colter Baseball Field on the GCU campus this Saturday and Sunday, April 23 and 24, to battle the Lopes. First pitch is 10AM – both for Saturday's doubleheader and Sunday's single game.
The current NCBA Rankings are listed below:
| Rank |
Team |
Total Pts |
Prev Rank |
| 1 |
Virginia Tech |
382 |
1 |
| 2 |
Delaware |
380 |
2 |
| 3 |
Penn State |
362 |
T-5 |
| 4 |
Florida State |
361 |
4 |
| 5 |
Michigan |
350 |
17 |
| 6 |
Elon (NC) |
282 |
T-5 |
| 7 |
Grand Canyon |
276 |
3 |
| 8 |
Cal Poly |
270 |
7 |
| 9 |
Oregon State |
249 |
15 |
| 10 |
Utah State |
157 |
NR |
| 11 |
Iowa |
143 |
T-11 |
| 12 |
East Carolina |
140 |
16 |
| 13 |
UCLA |
136 |
T-11 |
| 14 |
Connecticut |
129 |
9 |
| 15 |
Nebraska |
102 |
NR |
| 16 |
Texas A&M |
94 |
NR |
| 17 |
Ohio State |
80 |
18 |
| 18 |
Boston College |
66 |
NR |
| 19 |
Texas |
55 |
NR |
| 20 |
South Carolina |
45 |
20 |
