ACC Baseball News & Notes: Easter Weekend Edition

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As we start to look ahead to the final six weeks of the regular season, we want to first wish everyone a Happy Easter holiday weekend to all fans of the ACC. There has been a bit of a shakeup at the top of the two divisions, the results of last weekend’s play. Let’s take a look at how the league looks as the month of April arrives.

The Coastal division saw a change at the top based on what happened in the league last week. Virginia Tech and Pittsburgh swapped spots in the standings. The Hokies took over second place after having gone on the road and sweeping the Panthers. Virginia Tech now owns a one-game lead in the loss column on Pittsburgh and trails first-place Georgia Tech by a game. Both teams are back in action this week at home with Georgia Tech playing host to Virginia, and Virginia Tech hosting a slumping Boston College team. Meanwhile, North Carolina State went on the road and swept up on North Carolina. It has been quite some time since the Wolfpack has been able to say that. The last time NC State took three in Chapel Hill was back in April of 1992.

The big series in the Atlantic was between first-place Louisville and second-place Notre Dame. The teams were only able to play two of the three games as one was rained out. The two teams ended up splitting the games leaving the Cardinals with a one-game lead on the Fighting Irish. The win by Louisville gives them 119 conference wins since joining the ACC back in 2015. The number of wins is the most during this time of any school in a Power-5 conference. The Cardinals, who will play host to Wake Forest this week, go into that series as the number five ranked team in the country. The Yellow Jackets are the other conference team that is ranked in the Top-10. Georgia Tech comes in at #6 in the D-1 poll and find themselves in the Top-10 in four of the six college baseball polls.

The ACC Pitcher of the Week is Georgia Tech right-hander, George Archer. Last Saturday, in a start versus Duke, Archer put together a career-best performance. The Duluth, Georgia native went eight innings, given up six hits and two walks. He threw 109 pitches in helping his team to a 3-0 win over the Blue Devils. The win clinched the team’s 14th series win in their last 15 which dates back to 2015. Archer fanned a career-high nine batters and has now gone 18 consecutive innings without allowing a run.

The ACC Player of the Week had himself quite a seven-day period. Clemson first baseman, Caden Grice, led his team to a 4-0 week. All were road wins which included a sweep of Boston College in Chestnut Hill. The freshman from Greer, South Carolina went 9-for-18 (.500) with three doubles, one triple, and a home run. He drove in 13 runs and scored five runs. He slugged .944 and had a .571 on-base percentage. In the series at BC, Grice was 8-for-14 with three doubles, a triple, and 10 runs driven in. He also scored four times. In game one, he went 4-for-6 with seven RBI’s. In game two, he drove in three more runs, and in the Sunday finale, Grice went 3-for-5. For the season, Grice is hitting .343, with six HRs, one triple, four doubles, 25 RBI, 18 runs scored, a .701 slugging, and a .451 on-base. These numbers helped him to be named National Hitter of the Week by the NCBWA on Tuesday.

Next week we give more from the ACC.