NJCAA Division 1 Baseball Week 2 Poll

CHARLOTTE, NC – With the start of Kansas Jayhawk Community College Conference division play set to start this week, four KJCCC baseball teams continued their hot starts to the season last week to make moves in the latest NJCAA Division 1 Baseball Top 25 poll released on Monday, March 2nd.

Following last week’s massive movements up the polls for three teams as part of the week one regular season poll, the four teams from the KJCCC ranked in this week’s polls continued to make improvements to their rankings as three of the four teams improved their ranking from the week prior. After moving into the top 10 last week, Johnson County has climbed all the way to number two in the country after winning three of four games against number 15 ranked Iowa Western Community College to run their record to 18-2 overall ahead of the start of KJCCC East Division play this Thursday. The Cavaliers won the series opener at Iowa Western 4-3 before picking up wins in the final two games of the series by scores of 10-1 and 10-5 at home and have now scored at least 10 runs in 15 of their 18 wins. Adding to what was already one of the best starts to a season in program history, Cloud County moved up another two spots in the poll following an unblemished 5-0 week last week as the Thunderbirds avenged their only loss of the season against Kansas City Kansas Community College before sweeping a four-game series at home over Marshalltown Community College to improve to 14-1 overall.

Putting together a 4-2 week last week with home sweeps over Northeast Community College and Coffeyville, Hutchinson fell one spot down to number 18 this week as a pair of one run losses on the road at Coffeyville moved the Blue Dragons to 14-3 overall. All three losses for HCC this season are by one run, with Hutchinson averaging nearly 11 runs per contest. Also having a busy week last week, Barton played seven games in a span of five days, winning the final five of the week by sweeping a doubleheader over Highland before earning a three-game road sweep at Kansas City Kansas to improve two spots in this week’s poll to move up to number 23 in the rankings.

The 32-game grind of a KJCCC conference schedule begins for 16 of the 18 conference schools this week, as the schedule begins to move into a more traditional Thursday and Saturday slate for games following four conference teams being in action on Tuesday. In addition to Butler and Coffeyville facing off in non-conference action on Tuesday afternoon, Neosho County will host Crowder College and Seward County will host Northern Oklahoma Enid before seeing eight conference doubleheaders set to take place on Thursday afternoon.