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Damian Ruiz (42) Arkansas Razorbacks vs Texas Tech Red Raiders in a NCAA baseball game for the Shriners Children’s College Showdown at Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas on Sunday, February 15, 2026 (Photo by Eddie Kelly / ProLook Photos)

Power conference league play is now fully underway, with the SEC, ACC, Big 12 and Big Ten all playing conference matchups this weekend. It signals the arrival of the season’s most consequential stretch, when results more directly begin to shape rankings and postseason projections.

Here’s what I’ll be watching in Weekend 5.

Related: See Baseball America’s Top 25 College Baseball Rankings

The SEC Gauntlet Has Arrived

It’s an annual tradition around this time of year for non-SEC college baseball fans to bemoan how much attention the conference receives once league play begins. If you’re in that camp, remember that the NCAA selection committee has made it abundantly clear that’s where much of your attention belongs when evaluating the national picture. 

Whether you agree with the approach or not, the committee has consistently treated the SEC as the conference most likely to produce the national champion. And it has every year since 2019. The SEC has either tied or led the nation in NCAA Tournament bids every year since 2017. 

We generally expect that to hold again in 2026. Texas and Mississippi State look like national title contenders. Auburn, Georgia and Oklahoma appear to have the right ingredients. Arkansas, Ole Miss and Texas A&M may sit a tier behind, while powers such as LSU and Florida—both coming off unsavory weeks—are still as talented as any roster in the country. Kentucky, Alabama, Tennessee and Vanderbilt also profile as potential, and in some cases likely, NCAA Tournament teams.

Much of that bucketing, however, is still projection. Those teams have faced quality competition at points over the past four weeks, but none have navigated the kind of sustained grind that begins now and runs through the end of the season. It won’t take long before the SEC provides clearer answers.

Just look at this weekend.

No. 21 Tennessee opens league play at No. 6 Georgia

Ninth-ranked Arkansas hosts No. 2 Mississippi State

No. 13 LSU draws a prove-it series against a Vanderbilt team searching for just as much proof

No. 7 Oklahoma hosts No. 19 Texas A&M

No. 3 Texas welcomes No. 16 Ole Miss

Rankings could shift quickly and perhaps dramatically after just one weekend as no conference places more Top 25-caliber teams directly in each other’s path than the SEC.

An ACC Series To Watch Out West

It still feels strange to write about significant Atlantic Coast Conference matchups taking place about 10-15 minutes from the San Francisco Bay. It feels even stranger because the matchup involves Cal, which has reached the NCAA Tournament just six times since the turn of the century and only once (2019) in seven full seasons under coach Mike Neu.

Winning at Cal is hard. Really hard. It helps explain why the Golden Bears’ 13-4 start to the 2026 season stands out.

Cal hosts No. 11 North Carolina to open ACC play one week after the Tar Heels dropped two of three at home against then-No. 11 Virginia. Cal enters as the underdog, but it catches North Carolina at an interesting moment and after the longest trip the Tar Heels will make all season (North Carolina does not play Stanford).

There are also signs this Cal team might be more than an early-season flash. Catcher Hideki Prather ranks among the national leaders in barrels, while teammates Cade Campbell, Daniel Murillo and Jett Kenady have also produced strong contact. 

On the mound, freshman righthander Otto Espinoza, sophomore righthander Gavin Eddy and junior righthander Oliver de la Torre have combined for a 1.50 ERA with 71 strikeouts against 13 walks across 60 innings.

A series win over top-15 North Carolina would go a long way toward validating Cal’s early results against a relatively manageable non-conference slate. It would also provide a fast track into the Top 25.

Other Notables In The ACC

Cal-North Carolina headlines the ACC slate this week because it has the potential to be the most instructive. That series should tell us a great deal about both teams, and a Cal series win would introduce a new tournament contender into the conference picture.

Several other matchups across the league carry significance as well.

No. 4 Georgia Tech at No. 12 Clemson

Clemson sits at an impressive 15-2, though its strength of schedule has been modest. Georgia Tech appears to possess one of the nation’s most potent offenses, but it, too, navigated a relatively light non-conference schedule before opening ACC play by taking two of three from Virginia Tech. It was a solid start, though not definitive. This series opens up on Thursday night.

No. 17 Florida State at No. 18 Wake Forest

The Demon Deacons won 15 straight before falling to Coastal Carolina on Tuesday. The record looks strong, but Wake Forest has faced only one team (Houston) in a weekend matchup that finished Week 4 with a winning record this season and it lost. This series should reveal more about both clubs.

Other ACC Series We’re Monitoring

Miami, which fell out of the rankings after a series loss to Boston College last week, heads to Durham to face 13-6 Duke (1-2 ACC).

Louisville, ranked to begin the season before dropping out after an opening-weekend series loss to Michigan State, hosts Notre Dame. The Fighting Irish have several ingredients of a potential NCAA Tournament contender, including staff ace Jack Radel, a rising draft name to watch.

The ACC is likely to produce the second-most NCAA Tournament bids this season to the SEC, and the race within the conference begins to take shape this weekend.

Diagnosing The Big 12

You could make a case that the Big 12 is college baseball’s most interesting league. I’d hear you out without laughing.

No, its talent doesn’t approach that of the juggernaut SEC. It’s also unlikely to rival the ACC, which could push toward double-digit bids this season, in tournament representation. But among the power conferences, the Big 12 may be the most volatile, and trying to sort through its chaos to identify a clear favorite is harder here than anywhere else. Since 2021, the conference has produced as few as four NCAA Tournament teams and as many as eight, which it sent last season.

As of March 12, there isn’t an obvious best team in this league. 

TCU sits at No. 14 in the BA Top 25, which would make it the frontrunner by ranking, but it will also be without its ace for another one to two months and already has six losses, the most of any team currently in the poll. 

No. 22 West Virginia is the only other Big 12 team ranked at the moment, yet the 11-3 Mountaineers recently lost arguably their most talented pitcher, righthander Chase Meyer, who was dismissed from the team. West Virginia has also looked less than convincing at times, including in its final non-conference series against Columbia, which grabbed a win in the three-game set.

The unranked group is both intriguing and puzzling. Arizona State, which faces TCU this weekend, has the talent to win the league and host a regional, but its pitching in big games has appeared shaky and occasionally concerning. Baylor features a slug-heavy lineup but enters conference play at 10-6 after an uneven first month. Cincinnati has started 14-4 and possesses several interesting pieces, though sustaining that pace remains an open question for a program that has reached the NCAA Tournament just once since the pandemic-shortened 2020 season.

Oklahoma State, Kansas State and Kansas form another tier of teams with clear strengths but equally visible weaknesses that surfaced during non-conference play. Yet every team mentioned could plausibly hear its name called on Selection Monday.

Right now, the Big 12 is wide open. 

The Big Ten Runs Through The West

This is the new reality, and it likely will remain so for as long as the current conference alignment exists.

UCLA is the best team in the country. USC is climbing quickly behind one of the most potent pitching staffs in the nation. Oregon is knocking on the door of the Top 25. Those three programs clearly stand above the rest of the Big Ten at the moment. Nebraska has looked solid early, as has Minnesota (14-3), while Michigan (9-6) has already pieced together a few quality performances. But the broader theme remains: the conference runs through the West.

The question is how much that group will actually be tested.

UCLA hosts Michigan this weekend, USC travels to Northwestern and Oregon welcomes Indiana. All three West Coast programs enter as clear favorites, heavily so in each case. 

That dynamic could even become limiting when it comes to postseason positioning. How likely is the selection committee to award the No. 1 overall seed to UCLA if it absorbs a few losses to teams in the bottom half of a weak league? Could Oregon or USC host if their records remain strong but their strength of schedule lags behind the rest of the national contenders?

Iowa provides a useful example of the challenge. The Hawkeyes finished 33-22-1 overall and 21-9 in league play last season but ranked 80th in RPI and 99th in strength of schedule. They missed the tournament entirely.

RPI has not normalized yet—it’s still too early—but the early indicators illustrate the concern. USC’s strength of schedule currently sits at No. 55 and is unlikely to improve significantly as the season progresses. UCLA’s stands at No. 44.

As conference play deepens, wins will obviously matter. In the Big Ten, however, losses may matter far more for teams chasing the No. 1 overall seed, for potential regional hosts and for those trying to stay on the right side of the bubble.

Teams Making NCAA Top 25 Cases

Having already spent plenty of space setting the stage for conference play, I wanted to close this week’s notebook by highlighting the teams we at Baseball America are watching most closely for Top 25 consideration.

UC Santa Barbara: If you’ve read my work dating back to before preseason camp began, you know how much I like this Gauchos team and how strongly I believe it will spend time in the poll this season. That moment might not be far away. UCSB received votes in our internal rankings process Sunday night and now sits at 13-2 overall and 3-0 in Big West play.

Jackson Flora headlines a pitching staff that owns a 2.52 ERA. None of the 11 Gauchos pitchers who have appeared this season have ERAs higher than 3.54. The bigger preseason question centered on the offense, where there was significant uncertainty entering the year. That group has performed well so far, averaging nearly seven runs per game while slashing .297/.402/.458 as a unit. The Gauchos travel to UC Davis this weekend.

Alabama: In a pure power ranking, the Crimson Tide would likely sit comfortably inside the nation’s top 25. In a poll that must also account for conference depth and dynamics, they remain just outside the field for now. Still, Alabama has looked competitive against strong opponents and has played about as well overall as Tennessee and Florida, currently ranked No. 21 and No. 25, respectively. A strong weekend at Kentucky, combined with movement elsewhere, could be enough to push the Tide into the poll.

Kentucky: The situation mirrors Alabama’s, and the two teams meet this weekend. It’s a significant series for both.

Oregon: I mentioned the Ducks earlier, but it’s worth reiterating here. Oregon continues to play strong baseball, something it has done with remarkable consistency under coach Mark Wasikowski. The Ducks enter Week 5 at 14-3 overall and 2-1 in Big Ten play. Shortstop Maddox Molony is the top draft prospect in a program that has produced early-round talent regularly under Wasikowski, and the pitching staff has shown real promise. Righthander Will Sanford, in particular, could push into the first-round conversation next year if the improvements in his control hold.

Cincinnati: The Bearcats have been outstanding to start the season, not only in the win column but in individual performance as well. The roster has the look of a team capable of winning the Big 12. Its first league test arrives this weekend at BYU in a series that could go a long way toward establishing whether that early momentum is sustainable.

Coastal Carolina: The Chanticleers just exited the poll after a 2-2 week. Their early performance has fallen short of expectations for the 2025 national runner-up, though the context matters. Cameron Flukey and Hayden Johnson remain sidelined by injuries expected to keep them out for two-plus months. For Coastal to climb back into the rankings, it will need greater offensive consistency and steadier production on the mound. A strong Sun Belt should provide plenty of opportunities to prove it.

Arizona State: I’ve said it before and it bears repeating: Arizona State has the talent to host. The challenge is translating that talent into consistent execution for coach Willie Bloomquist, who has assembled very strong rosters throughout his tenure but has yet to see it fully click on the field at any point. A series win over TCU this weekend would very likely push the Sun Devils into the Top 25.