As the world’s largest independent baseball scouting service, Perfect Game’s primary mission is to identify (and rank) the best baseball players in the amateur ranks. We’ve also made a practice of identifying and ranking the best teams at the game’s grassroots levels.

With Louisiana State winning the 2009 College World Series Wednesday night in Omaha, it validated our choice of the Tigers as the No. 1 team in our pre-season ranking of the nation’s Top 100 college teams. LSU (56-17) was impressive from start to finish, winning the Southeastern Conference regular-season and tournament titles, the regionals and super-regionals, and finally, the crown jewel, the CWS title—the school’s sixth in 18 years.

We actually scored a rare double in our pre-season projections this year as Nevada’s Bishop Gorman High began the 2009 season as the No. 1 team in our ranking of the nation’s Top 100 high-school teams, and finished No. 1 in our final ranking of the Top 100 prep teams. The Gaels (40-4) rallied from a slow start to win 39 of their final 40 games and capture the Nevada 4-A title for the fourth year in a row.

The architect of both sets of pre-season Top 100 rankings was Perfect Game scouting coordinator Jeff Simpson, who was also responsible for weekly updates of the top 50 college teams and bi-weekly updates of the top 50 high-school teams. He rarely wavered in his belief that LSU and Bishop Gorman were the best teams at the college and high-school levels in 2009. LSU was our No. 1 team in all but three weekly rankings (and was No. 1 continuously from late April), and while Bishop Gorman fell briefly to No. 13 to account for losses in three its first four games, it gradually worked its way back up to No. 1.

It should also be noted that Jeff pegged Florida’s American Heritage High and Bishop Gorman as his Nos. 1-2 high-school teams in 2008, and the schools accommodated him by finishing 1-2 (not just in PG Crosschecker’s final top 100, but in other national prep rankings).