Baseball Regular Season Finale – Heels Come to Town

Time’s running out for Wolfpack Baseball (32-17, 13-12 ACC) to distinguish themselves as one of the top 8 teams in the nation as the Pack took it on the chin this past weekend at Louisville. When the dust settled, the Cards had not only swept the Pack, but also limited State to 3 runs in 3 games and never trailed at any point in any of the three games.

‘Twas not a good series for the Pack.

–

No time like the present for a little home cooking as State returns to the friendly confines of Doak Field to host Carolina for the regular season finale this weekend.

Frankly, both teams are struggling as they approach the finish line. Carolina is fighting to remain in the ACC Tournament field (currently they’d be the #9 seed out of 10). On the other hand, State is fighting to stay in the regional host discussion, hoping to get back into the national seed discussion, all while having lost 6 of their last 7 games.

If the Pack’s bats don’t wake up soon, it could be ugly.

And that could become problematic considering that Carolina, as usual, has one of the best pitching staffs in the nation. As an ENTIRE staff, they sport a 2.98 ERA compared to 3.81 for the Pack.

And while they don’t hit with the same power or average that the Pack does, they do the little things very well to get an extra base or scratch out that extra run. They draw walks better than we do, they don’t strike out nearly as much and they’ve stolen twice as many bases on the year as the Pack.

Boil that all down and it results in a Carolina team with a significantly lower team BA (.285 vs .303) and slgpct (.411 vs .443) still scoring virtually the same number of runs per game as the Pack (6.71 vs 6.75).

Translation….this series is pretty much a toss up. Fortunately, we have them in Raleigh.

–

Carolina at NC State Game Schedule

Thursday, May 19, 6:00pm – ESPN3
Friday, May 20, 6:30pm – ESPN3
Saturday, May 21, 1:00pm – ESPN3

*All ACC series this weekend are Thursday thru Saturday (ACCT starts Tuesday)

ACC Standings

Atlantic

Schools	Conf W-L-T	Conf PCT	W-L-T	PCT
Louisville	19-8-0	.704	43-10-0	.811
Florida State	15-8-0	.652	33-17-0	.660
NC State	13-12-0	.520	32-17-0	.653
Clemson	13-14-0	.481	35-18-0	.660
Wake Forest	13-14-0	.481	32-20-0	.615
Boston College	11-14-0	.440	29-18-0	.617
Notre Dame	11-14-0	.440	27-24-0	.529

Coastal

Schools	Conf W-L-T	Conf PCT	W-L-T	PCT
Miami	19-6-0	.760	41-9-0	.820
Virginia	16-11-0	.593	33-18-0	.647
Georgia Tech	12-14-0	.462	34-18-0	.654
North Carolina	12-15-0	.444	33-19-0	.635
Duke	12-15-0	.444	31-21-0	.596
Pitt	10-16-0	.385	25-24-0	.510
Virginia Tech	6-21-0	.222	19-33-0	.365

Elsewhere in the ACC this Weekend

(3)Miami at (9)FSU
(5)Louisville at Wake
VT at (8)UVa
(19)Clemson at ND
BC at (22)GT
Duke at Pitt

–

If the ACC Tourney started today…

This time next week the ACC Baseball Tourney will already be underway. As of the moment of this writing, the seeds/pools would break down as follows.

Miami (19-6)
Louisville (19-8)
Florida State (15-8)
Virginia (16-11)
NC State (13-12)
Clemson (13-14)
Wake (13-14)
Georgia Tech (12-14)
Carolina (12-15)
Duke (12-15)
–
ND (11-14)
BC (11-14)

Pool A would be (1)Miami, (4)UVa, (5)NCSU and the winner of the (8)GT/(9)Carolina play in game.
Pool B would be (2)’Ville, (3)FSU, (6)Clemson and the winner of the (7)Wake/(10)Duke play in game.

But with FSU hosting Miami this weekend, and UVa getting VT at home to end things, even the top spots aren’t set in stone yet. And there will almost assuredly be some shake up of spots 5 thru 10.

Fortunately, anything short of getting swept by Carolina this weekend, and the Pack is pretty safely above the play in game line. As a bonus motivation, sweeping Carolina this weekend could potentially knock them out of the field altogether if either BC or ND could pick up a win vs GT or Clemson, respectively.

But that also works the other way as well. Which is to say that Carolina will be motivated to NOT get knocked out of the field.

Anywhoo…we’ll revisit the ACCT issue after the weekend’s games are over and the field is set.

–

NCAA Tourney National Seeds (again, if the tourney began today)…

There was a question on another thread regarding how national seeds are determined and how RPI is used for same. Essentially, just like basketball tourney seeding, RPI is only one metric used. To be honest, I don’t know specifically what they weight more or less. They look at RPI as a guide, but it is definitely not the end all be all. Overall record, conference record, record against top 50 RPI, top 100 RPI, SOS etc., all enter into it.

Based only on what I’ve observed in the past, this would be my guess as to who the national seeds would be if the season ended today.

Florida (43-9) – No brainer as #1 overall
Miami (38-9) – Tough call between them and ‘Ville for #2 overall. But the ‘Canes played the tougher schedule and have a better conference record.
Louisville (42-10) – See above
Texas A&M (39-13)
Ole Miss (39-13)
Mississippi State (37-14-1)
Texas Tech (38-13)
South Carolina (38-13)

If you’re keeping score at home, that’s 5 SEC teams, 2 ACC teams, 1 Big12 team.

And in spite of our #6 RPI currently, we are barely even in the first four out right now IMHO. Vandy, LSU, FSU and UVa (D1Baseball has UVa in place of Ole Miss for example) have as good or better cases than we do currently.

Bottom line…we’ve got work to do over the next two weeks if we want a national seed and even if we hope to hang on as a regional host.

–

‘Twernt a lot of highlights at Louisville, but here’s the two that made the cut….