March 20, 2001
The Notre Dame baseball team-ranked as high as eighth in the national polls and off to the program’s best start in 42 years-is slated to play its home opener on Wednesday, March 21, at Frank Eck Stadium, with the first pitch at 4:05 p.m.
Notre Dame (13-2-1) has earned consensus top-10 status in each of the three major national polls for the first time in the program’s history. The Irish maintained the eighth spot in the Collegiate Baseball magazine poll while moving up from 11th to 10th in the Baseball America poll and rising from 10th to 9th in the USA Today/ESPN coaches poll. Pepperdine dropped from 9th to 13th in the BA poll, from 9th to 18th in the coaches poll and from 6th to 18th in the CB poll (Miami’s rise from 9th to 7th kept the Irish 8th in that poll).
Rice retained the top ranking in the CB and coaches poll while Stanford still holds down the top spot in the BA poll. Five other teams are ranked ahead of the Irish in each of the three polls: Georgia Tech, Nebraska, Arizona State, Miami and South Carolina. LSU is ranked ahead of Notre Dame in the BA (8th) and coaches (6th) polls while USC is one spot ahead of the Irish in the BA poll (9th).