College baseball teams in North Carolina remain prominent in the national rankings as the season’s regular-season midway point has passed.
Duke pulled off an Atlantic Coast Conference sweep of visiting Miami to move to No. 7, according to this week’s rankings from D1 Baseball.
That’s the first time the Blue Devils have ever swept Miami, winning 11-10 on Wallace Clark’s 11th-inning single Sunday at Combs Field in Durham to complete a comeback from a 7-1, eighth-inning deficit.
Duke won the second game of the series by 5-4. Ben Miller’s ninth-inning, run-scoring single gave the Blue Devils a 4-3 victory to open the series.
East Carolina is slotted at No. 9.
North Carolina lost two of three games in an ACC series at now-No. 11 Virginia, so the Tar Heels tumbled a few spots to No. 13.
Wake Forest, which began the season at No. 1, has climbed back after a big fall. The Demon Deacons swept an ACC series at then-No. 11 Virginia Tech to move to No. 14.
Nick Kurtz of Wake Forest homered three times Sunday when the Demon Deacons won 10-4. Virginia Tech lost a weekend series for the first time this season, falling to No. 16.
North Carolina State has been in and out of the rankings this season and the Wolfpack is out again after losing at home to East Carolina and suffering a three-game ACC sweep at Louisville.
The top five teams in the country for the second week in a row are Arkansas, Clemson, Texas A&M, Tennessee and Oregon State.
