ACC Baseball Championship News & Notes

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ACC Baseball Championship News & Notes

The 2018 regular season has come to a close and it’s time to look ahead to the ACC Baseball Championship that will begin on Tuesday, May 22. It continues right through to the Championship game set for noon on Sunday, May 27.

The four pools have been announced by the Conference and each team in the four pools will play a round-robin format. The best records will advance to the semifinals at the end of the week. Along with the pool assignment, seeding was also handed out. Here’s how the pools and seeds shape up.

In Pool A, North Carolina is seeded #1, followed by Georgia Tech seeded # 8, and Pittsburgh seeded # 12. The Panthers were the last team to make the field for this year’s event.

Pool B: Clemson # 2, Miami # 7, Notre Dame # 11.

Pool C: North Carolina State # 3, Florida State # 6, Virginia # 10.

Pool D: Duke # 4, Louisville # 5, Wake Forest # 9.

Matchups and times for the first phase of this championship will be announced later.

Heading into this weekend’s final set of conference games, the ACC was looking pretty good with regards to their RPI.  Five teams were inside the top 25. They are, North Carolina at 5, Florida State at 10, Clemson at 11, Duke at 15, and North Carolina State at 16. One other ACC team is just outside the top 25, the Louisville Cardinals at 27.

Why is this important? Since there are only 34 at-large bids at stake once the conference champs are crowned, the higher your RPI the better chance you have to see your schools name on TV when selection Monday takes place on Memorial Day.

The ACC player of the week is SS Will Wilson of the Wolfpack.  He helped his team to a perfect 5-0 record last week. That included a series sweep of Wake Forest.  He recorded a .550 batting average with 11 hits and 12 RBI.  Both are career highs for Wilson. The Sophomore from Kings Mountain, North Carolina also slugged at a .900 clip and had a .542 on-base percentage. In the field, Wilson was just as good with five assists, two putouts, and zero errors. Not only was Wilson named conference player of the week, he was named the NCBWA National Hitter Of The Week.

On the pitching side of things, Sophomore Connor Thomas of Georgia Tech was named pitcher of the week for the second time this season. Thomas threw his third complete game of the season on May 12 at Virginia. Thomas also registered his 100th career strikeout in that win. He leads the ACC in complete games, and innings pitched, strikeouts-per-walk ratio, as well as walks-per nine innings and in WHIP.  Thomas has not lost a start since March 23 going 4-0 over his last seven starts.

The hottest team heading into this year’s tournament just might be the Miami Hurricanes who are riding a ten game winning streak. The Canes also finished up the regular season by sweeping their final two ACC weekend series against Virginia Tech and Boston College. Their recent surge has them third in the Coastal Division.

The Clemson Tigers became the first team in the league to reach forty wins. They did so by beating Kennesaw State in a mid-week game on May 15. It’s the first time that the Tigers have reached the forty win plateau since 2006. Part of the reason for getting to such a lofty win total is their record in one-run ballgames this year. Overall, Clemson is 14-4 and in league play and the Tigers are 7-3.

There are four other schools that also have a shot at ending their years with 40 wins by the end of weekend play. They are, N.C.  State (38-12), Louisville (37-16), Florida State (37-16), and Duke (38-12).

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