Regular season wraps up; postseason begins
The Varsity Aces have said it before and will repeat: The final regular-season North Jersey baseball rankings are by no means final.
The state tournament is a time when teams can come alive — either by getting fully healthy, realizing untapped potential and/or putting it all together at the right time.
Though there were few bracketbusters in the 2023 playoffs; both Ramsey and Ridgewood knocked off No. 1 seeds en route to sectional finals. Hawthorne scored a first-round upset as a double-digit seed. So there is truly no telling whether the season-ending Top 25 will look similar to this one.
The three NJIC teams to clinch outright division titles garnered consideration for this week’s rankings: Glen Rock (11-0 Colonial), Wood-Ridge (8-2
Meadowlands) and St. Mary (12-0 National). Leonia finished 7-1 in the Liberty to clinch a share of its first league championship since tying Secaucus for first in the 1991 BCSL National.
Dwight-Englewood has a chance to tie the Lions atop the NJIC Liberty if it can defeat Ridgefield/Palisades Park on Tuesday.
In the NJIC Patriot, Emerson (7-1 in division) needed to win only one of its last two divisional games to assure itself of at least a tie for first, while two wins would give the Cavos the outright title. The only chance for Midland Park (7-2) was to beat Park Ridge on Monday and hope for at least one Emerson loss.
Top 25 rankings
1 St. Joseph (19-5) 2 Don Bosco (22-3) 3 Glen Rock (21-2-1) 4 Westwood (20-5) 5 Ridgewood (21-4) 6 Ramsey (18-5-1)
7 Lakeland (17-6)
8 DePaul (16-9)
9 Ramapo (15-11)
10 Indian Hills (17-7)
11 Pompton Lakes (19-4)
12 Pascack Valley (17-8)
13 Bergen Catholic (13-9-1) 14 Hackensack (17-10)
15 Emerson (17-5) 16 Dwight-Englewood (15-5-1) 17 Pascack Hills (19-7)
18 St. Mary (18-7)
19 Bergenfield (14-11) 20Wayne Hills (15-9)
21 Old Tappan (13-11) 22Passaic Valley (15-7)
23 Passaic (14-7) 24Midland Park (16-6)
25 Lyndhurst (15-8)
Also considered: Leonia (13-11), Mahwah (11-11), Passaic Tech (13-13), Ridgefield Park/Bogota (14-10), Rutherford (11-11), Wood-Ridge (15-9).
Records through Sunday’s games