After dropping out of the top 15 for the first time in nearly two years, the Grand Canyon University Club Baseball team is ranked 13^th in the latest National Club Baseball Association (NCBA) Rawlings Division I Poll. The Lopes made one of the largest jumps in this week's poll, moving up four spots from their No. 17 national ranking two weeks ago. It's the highest ranking the Lopes have enjoyed since they were ranked 9^th in late February.
 
It's not a coincidence that the newfound national respect arrived when the Lopes are playing their best baseball of the 2024 campaign. The Lopes are regionals-bound - thanks to 10 wins in their final 11 games of the regular season. That lone loss was Game 1 of a pivotal three-game series at San Diego State University, who entered the series in first place in the Southern Pacific South Division. The Lopes rebounded to take the final two games to move into first place, then cemented their 5^th consecutive SoPac South title with a sweep of Northern Arizona University last weekend at Colter Baseball Field on the GCU campus.
 
Even with the newfound momentum, the Lopes face a stiff task in order to return to the NCBA Division 1 World Series for the first time since 2019, since they'll head to the SoPac Regional Tournament as the 3^rd-highest ranked team in the four-team field. Both 2^nd-ranked California Polytechnic University and 3^rd-ranked University of California-Davis have locked up the other two automatic bids for the tournament and should be the top two seeds, and both the 4^th-seeded "at-large" team as well as the tournament schedule won't be announced until early next week. All the Lopes (15-11 overall, 12-3 SoPac South) know for sure is that their first game will be on Friday, May 10 at Sinsheimer Stadium in San Luis Obispo, California.
 
The full NCBA D1 Rankings are listed below:

Rank	Team	Total Pts	Prev Poll
1	East Carolina	362	1
2	Cal Poly	313	2
3	UC Davis	285	3
4	Michigan	275	4
5	Iowa State	261	5
6	Virginia Tech	241	6
7	Delaware	240	7
8	Texas A&M	235	8
9	Auburn (GA)	213	10
10	Utah State	199	15
11	Oregon	189	16
12	Illinois	174	14
13	Grand Canyon	170	17
14	Southern Methodist (TX)	160	13
15	Florida State	155	20
16	Northeastern (NY)	135	18
17	Cincinnati	124	NR
18	Penn State	102	NR
19	Oregon State	99	NR
20	Boise State	97	11