Overlooked D1 Baseball Teams (2024-2025)

In today's episode, we're going to be talking about the top five overlooked Division 1 baseball programs in the country for 2024. And going into 2025, there's around 300 Division 1 baseball programs in the country. And most people look at the power four conferences, which is the SEC, the ACC, the Big Ten and the Big 12. But there's only 69 teams of those power four schools. That means there's around the 230 division one mid major programs to look at. Somebody could argue two hundred and thirty of those schools get overlooked. Now we're going to just be talking about five today just to keep this concise and for you to look into these schools and I'll pull out other schools as well that you guys can take a look at, but we're going to dive right into this. But if you're new to my channel, my name is Alex Swenson. I'm A former Division 1 college baseball coach, scout and recruiter with 11 years of experience. And now what I do is help high school baseball players and their parents navigate this college recruiting process and put them in the best possible position to play at the next level. So if you're interested in working with me, feel free to reach out to me. I'm going to leave my website down below. But with that said, we're going to start with number one. The number one overlooked program in the country is Evansville. All right, Evansville had an amazing year. They, they went 39 and 26 this year, their best year ever. They were one game away from the College World Series. They went to East Carolina for their regional and beat them twice, won that regional, then went to Tennessee, lost their first game, won their second game at Tennessee and was one game away. And Tennessee ultimately beat them two out of three. But they are in Evansville and Indiana. Check them out. Very, very good program. Division 1 mid major program that's very competitive, that competes and they beat teams this year like Vanderbilt, Mississippi State, Indiana State, another very good Division 1 mid major program. They beat Oral Roberts, went to the College World Series, Division 1 mid major out of Oklahoma and a big contributor I think that had Evansville had such a good year because they competed against really good schools this year, beat Vanderbilt and beat Mississippi at their place. And they were ready to go into a hostile environment in East Carolina and in Tennessee. So congratulations to them. Number two is College of Charleston. They had a fantastic year and had some controversy at the end because they did not make the NCAA tournament going into a regional. They didn't win their conference championship at the end. If you win your conference championship, you get an automatic bid. But if you don't win, it's up to a committee to whether you get selected of those 64 teams and they did not get selected, but they went 41 14. They had again just an outstanding year. They're in their Coastal Athletic association conference with other good programs, mid majors that I'll talk about. More about the UNCW. Very good Division 1 Mid Major in Northeastern as well. Very good academic school and a good baseball program. Number three is Lamar University out of Beaumont, Texas. They went 44 and 15 in the regular season. It's the second best record out of all Division 1 programs. And another controversial they did not get into the NCAA tournament. They didn't win their conference. It's a big risk if you're a mid major. You don't win your conference tournament at the end of the season. You're leaving it up to a committee whether you get in or not. And they left them out when they went 44 in 15. Just an amazing season, some big wins. They went to Oklahoma and swept Oklahoma at their place. They also beat Sam Houston. But I think overall as far as the record, as far as the committee was looking at, the strength of schedule wasn't quite there. Although I thought they should have got in going 44 and 15. I don't care who you are, that's a really, really good season. Number four is we have St. John's University out of Queens, New York. They went 38 in 18 and one. They had a tie in there and they're in the Big East Conference, very competitive conference with Connecticut. They won the Big East Tournament. So they got an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament and just had a fantastic year. You got to check St. John's out up there in the Northeast. And last but not least, number five, UC Irvine. They went 45 and 15 and made the NCAA tournament. They just had a fantastic year. They have a great history about their program of being good and they've gone up and down. But this year they have done an outstanding job. You definitely want to check them out. They're in the Big West Conference. They had big wins against UCLA this year. They beat Michigan as well and UC Santa Barbara, one of the top Division 1 mid major programs in the country they beat. So those are your top five. Again, there's a lot more Division 1 mid major programs that are overlooked that I will highlight here. But make sure that you are considering division one mid major programs and not just the power four conferences and also make sure you consider D2 and D3 as well. Juco Nai, there's levels to all of this and there's opportunities out there. It's about a 2.2% chance of high school baseball players playing playing at the division one level and around that number at division two and around that number at division three. So we're looking around 7% chance. Make sure you diversify your school list as you go to give yourself options. So if you're only looking at the Vanderbilts of the world and the Florida's of the world and the Texas's of the world and UCLA's of the world, man you're really hurting your chances. Those are just so competitive. Keep an open mind to all these programs because as you've seen here today, they're very competitive and you can have opportunities to play there. But as well as they play against some of these top schools and have opportunities to beat them and do beat them. So consider again the Division 1 Mid majors and the D2s and D3s of the world. Hopefully you got something from this video. If you did, please smash that like button. Or if you listen on the podcast please write a review and I will see you in the next video. Take care.