The ACC, a baseball powerhouse conference, had a good first week of 2026. Many of the top schools in the conference got off to roaring starts. And, many of the best players in that conference were key reasons why. Here’s a primer on what went down during the first week.
Blue bloods stood out
So far, so good. All ACC teams exited with a record of .500 or better after the first week. Eight teams from the conference finished with perfect records.
The usual suspects are among those eight. Miami (FL) and North Carolina went 5-0. The former had a major scare against UCF in a midweek matchup but won it in a walkoff comeback victory.
Clemson, Georgia Tech, Virginia, and Virginia Tech went 4-0. Florida State went 3-0 in a rain-shortened week.
Even Stanford, a relatively new addition to the ACC, had a decent week with a 2-2 record. The Cardinal had a tough four-game weekend in Arizona, as Stanford lost to Oregon State and Michigan but beat Arizona and Nebraska.
Charlie Bates and JJ Moran each had seven hits. And Rintaro Sasaki, despite a .231 average over the opening week, had four batted balls over 110 MPH during the opening weekend. One of those was a home run off Arizona’s ace, Owen Kramkowski.
However, the one true blue blood that struggled out of the gate was Louisville. The Cardinals were without Zion Rose and lost their first two games of the year to Big 10 school Michigan State.
Fantastic pitching
The ACC’s aces feasted during the opening week.
UNC’s three co-aces were dominant. Jason DeCaro struck out seven over five scoreless innings, getting his junior season off to a great start. Folger Boaz and Ryan Lynch both struck out six over five innings in their respective outings. All three played a key role in helping UNC sweep the Indiana Hoosiersin Chapel Hill.
Sophomore Chris Levonas struck out nine to pace the Wake Forest Demon Deacons. Levonas, a 2024 second-round pick by the Brewers, pitched well down the stretch for Wake Forest last season and got off to a roaring start in 2026.
Aidan Knaak, meanwhile, had to fight through many runners on base during his first-week start against Army. However, he succeeded
New coaches off to good starts
Lastly, we have to note how the new head coaches did in their first week.
James Ramsey’s Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets went 4-0 in the first week, with none of their first four being particularly close. Georgia Tech scored at least 10 runs in all four games, and at least 20 in two of those. Big weeks from Vahn Lackey and Alex Hernandez, the latter of whom drove in 10 runs.
Chris Pollard’s Virginia Cavaliers went 4-0, as well. UVA scored 69 combined runs in the school’s three-game sweep of Wagner, and capped off the week with a much closer 5-2 win over VMI. Junior Eric Becker had nine hits in the first week to pace the school.
Lastly, Corey Muscara’s Duke Blue Devils went 4-1 to start the 2026 campaign.
Check out more of our college baseball coverage, including our Week 1 SEC recap.