April 16, 2001

The Notre Dame baseball team-riding a 10-game winning streak and 31-5-1 overall-continues to accumulate the highest national rankings in the history of the program, as the Irish have moved up two spots to No. 2 in the Collegiate Baseball magazine poll while also rising from 7th to 5th in the Baseball America poll and maintaining a No. 6 ranking in the USA Today/ESPN coaches poll. Each of the three rankings is the highest ever for the Notre Dame program in the respective polls.

The baseball squad becomes the fifth different Notre Dame team to be ranked first or second during 2000-01, with the women’s soccer, men’s fencing and women’s basketball teams each previously holding the No. 1 ranking while men’s lacrosse rose to No. 2 in late March.

Notre Dame also now sits atop the national charts for team earned-run average (2.61) and winning percentage (.852).

Stanford (31-7) is the consensus No. 1 team in all three polls and owns 476 poll points in the CB poll, followed by Notre Dame (469) and Louisiana State (467). LSU (27-11-1) and fourth-ranked Florida State both dropped two spots in the CB poll, after each suffered a pair of losses in last week’s action.

The top four in the BA poll include Stanford, LSU, Nebraska (30-8) and Rice (34-10), with the Irish moving past FSU and Georgia Tech for the No. 5 ranking in that poll.

Stanford received 40 of 41 first-place votes in the coaches poll and owns 1,024 total voting points, followed by Rice (926), FSU (879, one first-place vote), LSU (860), Nebraska (840) and ND (807). The Cornhuskers jumped from the No. 9 spot in last week’s coaches poll but the Irish moved past Georgia Tech to retain the 6th spot in the coaches poll.