As the Monday night matches concluded between Boise State and Winthrop’s VALORANT and League of Legends teams, respectively, DivisionONE’s Spring 2026 split has officially crossed the halfway point in the regular season. With exhilarating highs and humbling lows coming for virtually every team and player across the DivisionONE landscape, this piece is checking in on how everyone’s performance measures up to pre-season expectations.

Welcome to the Midseason Stock Monitor, where you can see who’s rising, who’s falling, and where to place your bets for the back half of the regular season.

Stock Up

Winthrop University

While it is more than reasonable to question how a team that has boasted a pristine reputation as one of collegiate esports’ most consistent contenders is considered “on the rise,” I’d like to present to you: Winthrop.

After heartbreaking defeats to Stony Brook’s squad for VALORANT and top rival Maryville in the grand finals of the Fall 2025 DivisionONE playoffs for LoL, WU turned over a new leaf entering the new year. On the VALORANT team: they bid farewell to elite controller player Connor ‘Glyph’ Garcia as he sought professional play in Berlin, instead replacing him with young up-and-comers such as Nolan ‘StrongTallGuy62’ Wertz and Adam ‘Fair’ Elharoun, the latter of which even faced cheating allegations just a short year ago in the professional development league known as VALORANT Challengers League (VCL). Despite a rotating door for the other roster slots, most importantly surrounding their in-game leadership (IGL), the raw firepower of Winthrop’s roster has been more than enough to keep their heads above water during a period where they faced three of the bottom four teams in the conference.

Entering the back half of the split, Winthrop will be rejoined by their aces from VCT Ascension 2025, duelist extraordinaire Philip ‘Infiltrator’ Nguyen, and professional VALORANT nomad Peter ‘Governor’ No. With surging Saint Clair College (SCC) and a daunting Maryville regular season finale in their sights, the momentum that Rock Hill’s squad has produced should carry them to a second consecutive top-two regular season finish, but the reintegration of ‘Gov and Fil’ will be integral to a strong postseason push.

Ohio State University (OSU) LoL

Though it seemed like a repeat of a middling 3-4 season was destined for the Buckeye League of Legends boys, it has been anything but that just four weeks in. Already sitting at three wins and one loss against powerhouse Maryville, Ohio State’s resurgence comes not off the back of any individual player changes – but instead the newfound confidence of their lethal bottom lane duo: Lingyu ‘Delight’ Zhang and Alexander ‘5150’ Hornsby.

Delight, already profiled earlier in the season, is an engage support expert whose Rell has continually burst open doors for the rest of the Ohio State team, dominating vision paths around the map to the tune of 85 Vision Score per game – third amongst all players. Outside of the bottom lane, the midlane mage maestro Aidan ‘5Fire’ Reckamp, continues to devastate opponents with elite laning and a top-five ranking in Damage/Min in DivisionONE thanks to his incredible Syndra performance against Saint Clair College earlier this month.

A tough matchup awaits the Buckeyes next week as Winthrop lurks, but with Utah and West Virginia (WVU) following it, a 5-2 record and third seed is well within the realm of possibility. Count on Ohio State serving as the gatekeepers to the upper echelon of DivisionONE moving forward.

Saint Clair College VAL

Powering past a West Virginia VALORANT team that was looking to cement itself in serious talks with Maryville and Winthrop is one way to get your name on this list as a riser. It is a whole other story to do that while also rattling off three straight victories, including a dominant 13-0 win over OSU on Corrode. Saint Clair College, after replacing VCT Game Changers legend Jasmine ‘Jazzyk1ns’ Manankil for Youssef ‘SSef’ Daghache between splits, has honed their game – and more importantly their map pool – to a fine point in 2026.

While most teams will choose to float or straight-up ban Corrode against them, St. Clair has shown promise on Bind, Haven, and Split as well, taking games of each from their other regular-season series thus far. Further, St. Clair has played five of the seven maps available in the pool this split and won on all of them, proving that their ‘bag’ runs quite deep. In their most recent series against WVU, entry fragger Isaac ‘Instxnct’ Walton not only stood toe-to-toe with but outplayed fellow DivisionONE star Dino ‘Dinxx’ Ferreira on his signature Waylay, dominating Map 3 and giving the Saints the last little bit of juice they needed.

Once more, a Winthrop matchup sandwiched between Utah and Stony Brook University (SBU) could play spoiler to the snowball that the Canadian reps have been rolling on, but if WU struggles to integrate their recently returned VCT loans and SCC capitalizes? We’d have a serious shakeup – and serious questions – at the top of the table.

Stock Down

West Virginia University LoL

Despite a win in Week 2 of the regular season over the winless Boise State, Morgantown’s Mountaineers rest at a paltry 1-3 record at split’s midpoint, and, with only a belated Valentine’s date with Stony Brook shaping up to be winnable, might finish the season with the lone BSU victory to cling to.

Although star ADC Dinxx has continued to produce eye-popping lane metrics, boasting a top-three creep score (CS) per 10 minutes in Division ONE of 9.77, the rest of West Virginia has limped behind him when trying to get games under control. Whether it’s about comfort or fit, WVU mid laner Alexander ‘Aolios’ Allen has yet to pick up the Ryze, Taliyah, and Orianna champions that define the meta in mid, and quite often finds themselves at the mercy of the opposing mage. Further, the experimentation continues in the jungle, as Nicholas ‘Jobey’ Ludwig cycles from traditional selections like Xin Zhao to high-damage, feast or famine champions like Gwen and Ekko.

If West Virginia wants to find wins in the home stretch, they’re going to have to make adjustments both to champion pools and draft strategy. Fortunately, their upcoming match against Stony Brook is just the place to get back on track after a brutal loss to St. Clair in Week 4.

Ohio State University VAL

Currently nestled at the bottom of the DivisionONE VALORANT standings, the Buckeyes’ FPS crew falls a bit short when compared to their MOBA counterparts. A hard-fought loss to Stony Brook on February 15th stripped another close contest from the schedule, and leaves their March 2nd matchup with Utah as their last hope for a win in Spring.

Historically bolstered by their superstar duelist main Gargaar ‘Des’ Osman, OSU has opted for a different lineup for most of their Spring 2026 matches, instead swapping in Samuel ‘Hamburger7’ Fairchild against SBU and Elliot ‘Waldy’ Waldburger in their Week 3 bout with Maryville. With just a single map win on Bind in their game against Stony Brook, Ohio State struggles on quite a few of the maps in the current rotation and will need to straighten out at least one more map to secure a future series. My bets would be on Haven, as they improved week-to-week, going from a 13-5 loss to Maryville to a 13-7 defeat against SBU.

Their next matchup against Winthrop should absolutely be used as a learning opportunity while they continue to shift around the starting lineup and decipher their winning formula. That feeds directly into their Week 6 game against Utah, where they hopefully will have cracked that code – and deliver an ultra-banger to start the week.