The Pack lost a heartbreaker today. They were up 7-2 after the seventh inning, but the Yellow Jackets scored eight runs the rest of the way to win the 1st game of this year’s ACC tournament 10-9. The Pack did score two runs in the eight inning to retake the lead 9-8, but State’s shortstop was thrown out at home in a collision with the catcher. On the play, the umpire ejected shortstop Tommy Foschi due to a crazy rule in college baseball that protects fielders who make a choice to block the path of the runner.
That ejection led to NC State putting in a new 2nd baseman (Russell Wilson) and moving the starter at second base over to shortstop for the top of the ninth inning. To start the inning, errors were made by the first baseman, the second baseman and the shortstop consecutively which led to Georgia Tech’s decisive two runs in the inning.
While NC State should have won the game even with the questionable judgment by the umpire, this call certainly didn’t help us defensively in the pivotal 9th inning.
Updated
Miami beat Clemson today 8-1. For the Pack to advance, Miami must beat GT, NC State must win its last two games and Clemson must beat GT on Friday.
Scenario to advance:
Pack 2-1 (beats Miami and Clemson, loses to GT)
Miami 2-1(beats GT and Clemson, loses to NC State)
Tech 1-2 (beats Pack, loses to Clemson and Miami)
Clemson 1-2 (beats GT, loses to Pack and Miami)
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Morning writeup
State opens the ACC tournament at 10am (hope the boys had their coffee) against Georgia Tech. This will be the one and only meeting of the season against GT, so this is a critical game for both teams as they aspire to host an NCAA regional. I would say State is in a “power bracket” in the ACC tournament, but there are top 10 RPI teams all over the place, and Wake Forest is the only team in the Round-Robin event that has virtually no shot at the NCAAs. It will be interesting to see how much emphasis Avent places on this game– does he play for 1 win, or play for the bracket. Surkamp is likely to take the ball in game 1– he is coming off a stellar pitching performance against Florida State in a 12-2 Thursday victory. The offense needs to get back to swinging the bats; after the 12 run outburst against FSU they were stifled by FSU pitching in the last two games.
