Top D-I & D-II schools in the Virginia-Carolinias region and why?

Here are my picks for top D-1 schools in those states.
Virginia:
Richmond
UVA
VCU
William & Mary
JMU

North Carolina:
Wake Forest
UNC
NC State
UNC-Wilmington
East Carolina

All of the above have winning programs with a good track record of sending players onward and offer quality educations. All of them are different and you could find something for any taste.

VaDad

Did you forget something?? Like a state!!

I believe he said Carolina's

USC (that's Univ. of SC for the left coasters) has a great baseball program. Lost to Texas in the CWS a couple of years ago. Coach Tanner and Coach Meyers are great people. The school's International Business MBA program is very highly regarded.

Clemson (Aaarrgghhh!!!!) is ok too.

A couple of other very good baseball schools.

South Carolina:
Coastal Carolina
Winthrop
Spartanburg Methodist (JUCO)

North Carolina:
Elon
WCU
Louisburg (JUCO)
Methodist (D3)

yawallac,

Sorry. You are right about South Carolina. Saw the Handley kid when he was in High School playing on a scout team. He made a great catch by laying out in right center to rob a double off my son. My son had to hit a double to left center next at bat to avoid it happening again.

Clemson, Coastal Carolina, and Winthrop are fine programs also.

As a baseball school, High Point (NC) has made great strides in the past few years also.

A great place to play ball and live is also at the College of Charleston ... good program.

South Atlantic Conference (SAC) has several good D-II baseball programs, and all the schools seem very similar-small (1200-2000 students), solid education (but not as much academic variety as larger Universities), strong support for sports: Carson-Newman, Lenoir-Rhyne, Wingate, Presbyterian, Newberry, Mars Hill, Tusculum, Catawba. Schools are in the Carolinas. At least 4-5 have beautiful baseball fields (haven't seen them all yet).

Hokieone .....

You must have missed the day they had Geography at VT. Some of those beautful schools are located in "Old State of Franklin" or you young guys say Northeast Tennessee.


"God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference"

Yep, my bad. Actually I took Geology, affectionately known at some schools as "Rocks for Jocks". As long as they're south of the Mason-Dixon, they're all okay with me.

My litmus test in an area is whether an order for "Iced Tea" comes sweetened, without asking, and do you get grits on the plate for breakfast, whether you order them or not. The places I've been in Tennessee pass these tests with flying colors!

My humble apologies to the Old State of Franklin.

last time i checked, so. carolina is in that region!!!! Clemson is in that state and Clemson is the best baseball program.

For D-III, you have Ferrum (VA), Methodist (NC)--two of the perenial top 10 in the country. Ferrum routinely has players drafted and has two (Billy Wagner and Eric Owens) in the pros. Great facilities and the head coach is also the AD.

I Timothy 4:8

Winthrop is a terriffic D1 program and UNC Greensboro is rising fast!

Watch for excitement in the BARTON program this year

TRhit

Callaway,
What's with the red face for Clemson?

Almost hesitate to ask...Davidson?

Davidson is an outstanding school and Coach Cooke has an excellent reputation. The Southern Conference is a nice conference with some excellent baseball schools and is geographically quite compact so travel demands are not great. Davidson has to compete with larger schools who have bigger budgets and do not have the same very high admission standards - so it will be challenging for them to compete for a conference championship. If you can handle the academics, I would recommend it highly.

-jda

baseonballs50

Just "funnin ya" as they say down here. I attended and worked for Univ of MD, then worked for Univ of SC. Clemson is a rival to both of "my schools".

All kidding aside, Clemson is a great school.

quote:

---

Originally posted by cal2004:
Almost hesitate to ask...Davidson?

---

Davidson is the very personification of "STUDENT-athlete". Their academic reputation is well deserved and they do a good job of competing D1. By their very (selective) nature, they are not going to attempt to recruit any student who doesn't excel academically, so their teams lack depth (but not quality). I have a lot of respect for Davidson athletes that I have met.

Bottom line on Davidson-- you cannot lose there as a student/athlete

TRhit

Thanks y'all (if son goes there must learn to speak their language ) Appreciate the votes of confidence for the school...

Trhit,

Curious as to why Barton, they have lost a lot of pitching and the starting SS is medical redshirt this year.

NCDAD

Bump...

As for NCAA Div I
UNC getting stronger by the day, and I mean stronger. They have two of the top rated pitchers in the class of 2006. Both will be 1st rounders next year, probably in the top 5 picks.
ECU not falling off much even though they had a ton of players drafted last season. The town of Greenville is a distraction for a lot of people though.
UNCW Get good players each year and a great location
USC Great team year in and out
Clemson Ditto
Coastal Carolina Another great location
Elon I think they are going to be tough in a few years if they keep getting the kind of talent they have been getting.

As for Div II
UNCP, Pfeiffer, Mt Olive, (not sure of many SC DII)

Div III
Methodist, Averett (see above about SC)

NAIA
Montreat

JUCO DI
Surry won Region last season and one win shy of World Series; Blue Ridge is doing a tremendous job. Look for them to compete with Surry for the top team in Region X in a few years. Spartanburg Methodist always has a good team but lose lots of players due to grades; Louisburg is good but a little overrated in my opinion. Surry exposed them last year, twice, in their region tournament. They sign a ton of players also which means there is a chance you could be on their JV team, which I feel is a waste of time at a JUCO. They do have one of the top pitching staffs in Region X this year. Young Harris is always loaded also, but as we have (maybe some of us) read on here they may have a lot of issues. Middle Georgia is good, too.

JUCO DII
Lenoir Coach Hartsell is a good coach that always gets the most out of his teams.

44 magnum,
You mentioned that Spartanburg Methodist lost a lot of players to grades. Do you have any idea why? Are the academics that difficult there or do they recruit guys that are not good students or is there some other reason? They have had some contact with my son and he is interested in them.

You have a pm Lefty's Dad. But, I think most of the academic things are on the player. Coaches can't make players do their homework or go to class. They can do a lot to encourage it such as suspensions, running, or whatever but I think most of the responsibility lies on the player to look after themselves and try to keep their grades in order. Hope that helps.

Wow, great local knowledge here, great insights...

The one that seems noticeably missing is DUKE? College books refer to it as the "Stanford of the south" can anyone comment on the baseball? I know they are are in one of the most competitive conferences in the country (7 NCAA regional participants last year, second only to the SEC). So I can't judge the program solely by their record. Anyone care to share some insight?

quote:

Originally posted by GitErDone:
Wow, great local knowledge here, great insights...

The one that seems noticeably missing is DUKE? College books refer to it as the "Stanford of the south" can anyone comment on the baseball? I know they are are in one of the most competitive conferences in the country (7 NCAA regional participants last year, second only to the SEC). So I can't judge the program solely by their record. Anyone care to share some insight?

The only thing I can say about Duke is that baseball doesn't seem to be a priority at that University. Their recruiting efforts in state are very limited (at best). They have a few very good players and some guys get national attention by playing there, but they don't have much depth.

All-in-all, it's a very weak program. It struggles against Mid-level D1 competition. They have losses this season against NC A&T,Cincinatti, Wright State, Army, Marshall .. were swept by Elon, lost to a good UNC-W team .... The two in-conference series so far(Georgia Tech and Miami) they weren't competitive.

As far as baseball goes, you will get exposure by playing against top programs UNC/Miami/Florida State etc, but Duke will probably continue to be a cellar dweller for years-to-come.
-------------------------------
But you don't go to Duke to just play baseball ... you go to Duke to get one of the best educations in the nation!!!!!!

HHH, great insight, very helpful, thanks. Any thoughts as to why... given their apparent overall athletic focus?

As far as Duke is concerned, our son just loved the campus and if the coaching staff had been the quality of UNC's he probably would have ended up there. However, we did allot of investigation and asked a ton of questions of many knowledgeable baseball people including scouts and high level summer college teams and Duke does have the reputation of having players from all over the country but the majority of them don't improve while they're there. Besides a quality education, our family's priority was also a good baseball education in case an opportunity presented itself after college. We looked at schools that had quality pitching coaches and Roger Williams at UNC has a reputation for greatly improving what he gets and that was very appealing. The staff he has now is among the best in the country. My only closing advice is look at the academics of the school and marry that with the repuation of the coaching staff and your son will have a terrific time on and off the field.

I have an additional specific academic question for all the schools mentioned here:

Which (if any) are know for having a strong journalism/mass communications major/department?

jbbaseball---

Elon University has a terrific communications department.

Top 5 D1
1.) University of South Carolina *(#26)
----- Ray Tanner and the Cocks, they are always strong. 5 Corners in Columbia
2.) Clemson *(#13)
----- Khalil Greene, Clemson always puts out top notch talent. He is a staple on Sports Center
3.) North Carolina Chappel Hill *(#21)
----- Andrew Miller and Daniel Bard, tough to score runs against!
4.) College of Charleston (*#22)
----- Right on the Peninsula, great location, fun town ... almost too fun
5.) Coastal Carolina *(#25)
----- New head coach, we will see what happens
*Pre-Season Poll

Top 5 D2
1.) USC Aiken *(#12)
----- Beautiful Field, Aiken up and coming town.
2.) Francis Marion *(#13)
----- Good program, returning a good chunk of starters.
3.) West Virginia State *(#6)
----- Do not know much about them.
4.) Armstrong Atlantic University *(#18)
----- Right next to Savanah, strong program, good push at end of season.
5.) Univ. North Carolina Penbroke *(NR)
----- Started out 2005 very strong, fluttered towards end
*End of 2005 Season Poll

All D1 schools you can not go wrong with. USC and Clemson are huge rivals and great baseball communities, programs deep in tradition, awesome games to watch! Col. Charleston and Coastal Carolina are right by the ocean, awesome schools. Only thing I know about UNC is that they have 2 stud pitchers, absolute Thoroughbreds (Miller and Bard).

The D2 schools down south a awesome. My little bro. plays for Francis Marion, and I also played in the peach belt in my hay day. Based on the baseball fields alone, I would have to side with USC Aiken, brand new field, most of the money donated by Roberto Hernandez Stadium http://www.pacersports.com/ConstructionPics052703.html

You can not really go wrong.
Don't know much about the JUCO's sorry.

PAmom is right ...

Great journalism, Communications program at Elon ...