The 2026 DII baseball season is in the books. Tampa is the national champion yet again, defeating West Chester in a heavyweight championship series. The Spartans added to their lore by becoming the first team in DII baseball history to win three titles in a row, with head coach Joe Urso picking up his eighth national championship as head coach.
SPOILER ALERT: Tampa is your No. 1 team in the final DII baseball Power 10 rankings. This was a season to remember, with 30-35 teams separating themselves from the pack as the elite of the division. That made it particularly difficult to narrow it down to a final ranking, more so than any previous season in the history of the DII baseball Power 10.
But someone has to try.
⚾🏆The 2026 DII baseball championship, rewind: Recap, scores, bracket🏆⚾
As a final reminder for the 2026 season, the Power 10 rankings are a blend of metrics and on-the-field play, as there are instances where metrics don’t tell the whole story. These rankings are mine and mine alone, there is no voting committee, but I do take selection metrics such as ' KPI, both of ' RPI and PI and ' NET into consideration. Most importantly, a trip to Cary does not guarantee a team makes the top 10. Getting hot in May is impressive, but these rankings try to tell the tale of the whole season.
The final DII baseball Power 10 rankings of 2026
No. 1 Tampa | Previous: 3. The Spartans are national champions again... for the 11th time. They finished the season winning 23 of their last 25 games, including going 10-1 in the tournament. Their lone loss was to a West Chester team that was as tough as anyone they faced all season. The Spartans were anchored by the best pitching staff in DII baseball, and it was their closer/infielder Luke Fikar, the Most Outstanding Player of the finals, who shined brightest on the big stage, picking up three wins in relief while recording six big hits and driving in two more.
No. 2 West Chester | Previous: 8. The Golden Rams were tough from first to last pitch of the season, holding the No. 1 KPI in DII for the bulk of the home stretch. They were a run-scoring machine on DII's biggest stage, scoring at least six runs in each of their first eight games of the tournament. While the Golden Rams didn't take home their third national championship in program history, they showed how strong a team top to bottom this was, competing with the mighty Spartans and even taking a game 12-4. This team set its storied program record for wins in a season with 48, had the selection metrics and the hitting and pitching stats that make them the unquestioned No. 2 team in DII this season.
No. 3 UT Tyler | Previous: 7. The Patriots were a Power 10 team for most of the season despite the metrics not being in their favor. That’s not to say they had bad metrics; they are top 20 in both KPI and NET. But that is more a factor of playing all its games within its own conference, bringing down some of the numbers (like strength of schedule) that otherwise boost KPI and NET. This team was full of tournament experience, and once the DII baseball championship started, they showed exactly why they are in the top 5. The Patriots took two of three from Angelo State, two of three from Colorado Mesa and both games against Central Missouri in Cary. That’s some impressive baseball right there.
No. 4 Catawba | Previous: 6. The Indians were another team that never left its Power 10 perch from opening day to final pitch. Catawba was also top five in NET and KPI, so this seems like the perfect slot for the team. It is the second time in three years that Catawba reached the national semifinals, but unfortunately, it was also the second time the Indians ran into Tampa. This team finished with 49 wins and its only series loss of the season was against Wingate in the SAC championship. Brandon Crabtree (.413, 1.261 OPS, 24 doubles, 18 home runs, 73 RBIs) had one of the best seasons in Catawba history in leading a very solid lineup one through nine.
No. 6 North Greenville | Previous: 1. If you only watched the tournament, I understand this will be met with question marks and dismay. After all, the Trailblazers didn’t even make it to the super regionals. But these are power rankings, and metrics play a big part. This was a top three team in KPI and NET and owned the top spot in PI and RPI in the Southeast Region, a region with eight teams in the top 20 NET and six teams in the top 15 KPI. The Trailblazers didn’t make it out of their regional pod because they were bad; they were battling some of the best teams in all DII and simply fell to a Francis Marion team that caught fire at the right time.
No. 7 Point Loma | Previous: First five out. The Sea Lions are a prime example of how metrics can be deceiving if you don’t watch a team closely enough, and for much of the season, I admittedly fell for it. The Sea Lions had a weak strength of schedule, which lowered their NET and KPI to the point that — paired with the head-to-head series loss to Cal State Monterey Bay — the Otters were the No. 1 seed in the West and in the Power 10 a few spots ahead of Point Loma for most of the season. However, the Sea Lions were without question one of the top teams in DII, and this ranking may still be too low. Once in Cary (for the third time in five years, mind you) they beat Catawba, before falling to the Indians in one of the best games of the tournament. They also had Tampa on the ropes and were it not for a base-running gaff in the eighth inning, Point Loma could very well had still be playing. The Sea Lions played in two of the toughest games of the entire tournament, hung the whole way, and they had near-elite pitching and some big bats that made this a team that should have been Power 10 all season.
No. 8 Colorado Mesa | Previous: 2. The Mavericks had a stretch of more than 40 straight games in which they didn’t lose to a DII team. They then scored 15 runs in each of their first three tournament games before running into the bracket buzzsaw that UT Tyler has apparently become. This was another exciting lineup that took advantage of the thin Colorado air to launch 85 home runs and score 645 runs in yet another 50-win campaign.
No. 9 Central Missouri| Previous: Also considered. This will probably irk the Gorillas fans, but it was close. The Mules suffered one blow after another to their pitching throughout the season (with ace Jack Scott never returning after a March injury) and it caught up to them... but not before a memorable run to the finals. The Mules’ road to Cary was a tough one, but they dominated two top 25 teams in Minnesota State and Rogers State in the regional pod, before trouncing Augustana (SD) in a super-regional sweep by a combined score of 16-2. They then set the modern DII baseball championship era record for runs in a game with 23 when they eliminated UIndy from the bracket. Make no mistake, this team was as good as the lofty expectations every year in Warrensburg.
No. 10 (tied) Francis Marion, Pittsburg State | Previous: First five out, 5, respectively. This was tough to separate. Both teams finished top 10 in NET, with Pittsburg State at six and Francis Marion at nine. Pittsburg State had the higher KPI, but Francis Marion defeated North Georgia and North Greenville — two top 15 teams ALL season long — to advance to its first-ever super regionals while Pittsburg State didn’t advance out of its pod. The bottom line is these were two of the best offenses in DII powered by arguably the two best players in DII in the Gorillas’ Dagen Brewer and Patriots’ Charlie Bussey III.
First five (ish) out (in order)
- West Florida: The Argos ended their DII era as the No. 1 seed in the South and made the super regionals.
- Grand Valley State: The Lakers' season ended in stunning fashion to UIndy in the super regionals, but from top to bottom this was one of the best teams in DII from first pitch.
- Augustana (SD): The Vikings came to life in the postseason, sweeping their way to the NSIC title and reaching the super regionals.
- Millersville: The Marauders handled Seton Hill in the regional pod before succumbing to West Chester in the supers. Once again, this team was deep in pitching that helped them go deep into the tournament.
- North Georgia/Wingate/Young Harris: Take your pick; they are all deserving. This means Bentley (No. 46 KPI; 100 NET) and UIndy (No. 49 KPI; 69 NET) didn’t crack the top 16 despite making it to Cary. I am okay with that when you look at North Georgia, Wingate and Young Harris all finishing in the top 15 of both metrics. When you play in the Southeast, every team can’t make it to Cary… they can’t even all make it to the super regionals. How far a team goes cannot be the end-all decision maker in the Southeast, and these teams had the numbers to back a lofty ranking, no matter where they finished in the tournament.
2026 DII baseball honors
Players of the year: Charlie Bussey III, Francis Marion and Dagen Brewer, Pittsburg State. Go ahead, you try and separate these two. Both Bussey III and Brewer had historic seasons. Bussey III () set the DII record for most runs scored in a season with 113, while also recording the 10th most hits in a single season becoming just the third player in DII history with 100 hits and 100 runs scored. His .489 batting average led all three divisions as well. Brewer () won the MIAA triple crown (.442 average, the second-most home runs in DII with 26 and a DII-best 107 RBIs) while setting the DII single-season record for RBIs. His monster 2025 debut led the Gorillas to a historic program run, and he only helped better that in 2026 for both his stats and his team. We are looking at two of the greatest seasons in recent DII history, and we were lucky enough to have them both in the same season leading their programs to new heights.
Pitcher of the year: Colby Deaver, Emporia State. Tampa’s pair of aces, B.J. Bailey and Robert Satin, were both strongly considered here. But what Deaver did in 2026 was video game like. The 6-foot-3 right-hander contended for the DII triple crown, pitching to an 11-2 record with a DII-best 1.50 ERA and 0.82 WHIP, adding a .191 batting average against and 9.5 strikeout-per-nine rate while only issuing 12 walks in 96 innings pitched for a DII-leading 8.5 strikeout-to-walk ratio. He opened the season with five-straight scoreless starts and never allowed more than three earned runs in a single outing this season. That is consistency.
Freshman of the year: Josh Bay, Southern Nazarene. There were many options to choose from, but the Crimson Storm’s outfielder was a total beast. According to NCAA.org, he led all freshmen with 19 home runs and his 57 RBIs were 10th among all rookies. He hit .368 with a 1.208 OPS, scored 49 runs and only struck out 28 times in 185 at bats, just 15 percent of the time. He closed the season on a tear with a 14-game hitting streak during which he drove in 21 runs.
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