Boston College Baseball: ACC Places Five Teams Inside Top 25

Baseball America released its top 25 rankings on Tuesday, with five ACC schools landing inside the rankings to start the 2016 season.

Boston College will play four of the five teams, including all three Atlantic Division representatives. The Eagles will play one of the two Coastal Division teams landing inside the rankings to start the year.

Tops on the list for the Eagles are the second ranked Louisville Cardinals and fourth-ranked Virginia Cavaliers. Louisville finished with the league's best record a year ago in their first season in the ACC, going 25-5 and 47-18 overall en route to a Top 10 national ranking.

Virginia, meanwhile, won 44 games en route to the ACC's first national championship since 1955. Despite finishing as the best team in the nation, however, the Wahoos finished the regular season at only .500 in ACC play, one of two Coastal Division teams to finish at the mark. After going 15-15 in ACC play, second place in their division, they went 1-3 in the ACC Tournament with only an 11-0 victory over Georgia Tech. Despite this, they earned the third seed in the Lake Elsinore (California) Regional.

As the only non-California team in the regional, Virginia drew second-seeded Southern Cal in the first round in a bracket featuring the host and top-seed UC Santa Barbara and fourth-seeded San Diego State. After San Diego State shocked Santa Barbara with a 4-3 result in the first round, the Trojans eliminated the top seed in the first elimination game, 12-3. That allowed Virginia to defeat San Diego State, 3-1, before facing USC again in the regional final. USC, having drawn an elimination game against the fourth-seeded team, won 12-11, before losing their elimination game, 14-10, in 11 innings.

The Cavaliers continued their undefeated streak through the Super Regionals, where they hosted and swept former conference foe Maryland, 5-3 and 5-4, to advance to Omaha. There, Virginia defeated Arkansas and Florida to earn the top slot in the bracket finals. Florida, after defeating Miami in Second Round elimination game rematch, defeated Virginia, 10-5, to set up Semifinals elimination game won by the Cavs, 5-4.

Virginia would lose the first game of the CWS Championship Series, 5-1, to defending champion Vanderbilt, but they rallied for two straight wins, 3-0 and 4-2, to win their first national championship.

Of the other ranked teams, BC will draw #17 Florida State and #19 NC State as part of their Atlantic Division slate. The Eagles avoid #6 Miami as they will not play the Hurricanes in divisional crossover competition.

None of the Eagles' non-conference opponents drew rankings. BC only plays one power conference team in its non-conference slate, a March 6th matchup with Ohio State as part of the Snowbird Classic.

BC opens up their season on February 19th when they take on Northern Illinois at Camelback Ranch in Glendale, Arizona.