ACC Baseball News & Notes: The Final Month has Begun

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Down to the wire we go as the final month of the regular season in the Atlantic Coast Conference gets underway. Teams are now starting to do some scoreboard watching as the race to the post-season heats up. There is still time to go and check out some really good college baseball before the tournament begins. Here are some other happenings in the ACC.

A milestone was reached on Sunday at Florida State as Georgia Tech head coach Danny Hall joined the 1,300 win club. He became the fourth active head coach to reach that number and the 20th all-time in Division 1. The win on Sunday by the Yellow Jackets allowed them to avoid being swept by the Seminoles. The come from behind 9-8 victory keeps Georgia Tech within two games of front running Pittsburgh for the top spot in the Coastal. It also keeps them tied for second place with Virginia Tech. In an interesting quirk in the schedule, the Yellow Jackets will spend this week playing non-conference baseball. First up will be a game with Georgia that took place on Tuesday. Then, they will play a weekend series versus Kennesaw State with the first two games taking place at Georgia Tech, then Sunday’s game will be played at Kennesaw State.

If there was a disappointment last weekend, it was that the top teams in each division did not get a chance to play each other. Louisville and Pittsburgh were scheduled for a weekend series, but that three-game set was canceled due to a Covid-19 issue inside the Panthers program. The good news is that neither team was affected by the lack of playing last weekend. The Cardinals (14-6) still have a slight lead on Notre Dame while Pittsburgh (14-10) holds a two-game lead on three teams Georgia Tech, Virginia Tech, and Miami. They have a three-game lead on North Carolina.

Speaking of the Irish, they had a wild weekend on the road at Chestnut Hill facing Boston College. After splitting the first two games of the series, the Irish found themselves in big trouble during game three. Down 9-0 in the 8th inning, ND staged quite a comeback at the expense of the Eagles bullpen. The Irish would send 17 batters to the plate, 12 runs would score on five hits, four hitters would be walked and three more would be hit by pitch. BC would use four pitchers to try and stop the onslaught. Unfortunately, by the time Boston College recorded the third out of the inning, the 9-0 Eagles lead became a 12-9 Notre Dame advantage. ND would win the game by a 13-9 score. It allowed the Irish to leave the Heights as the only team in the ACC to have won all of their conference series this season., The comeback was the biggest come-from-behind win for Notre Dame since 2009 when they erased a 9-0 deficit to beat St. John in the Big East tournament.

The ACC Player of the Week is Florida State sophomore catcher Matt Nelson. In their road series at Georgia Tech, Nelson homered in all three games and added a couple of doubles while hitting .500 for the weekend. Nelson’s bat has been hot all season long for the Seminoles. He leads D1 in home runs with 18 Including seven in his last eight games. He also leads in RBI with 53, ranks second in slugging percentage (.868), and sixth in total bases with 105. He also showed off his arm behind the plate by throwing out the only Yellow Jackets base runners that tried to steal on him.

The ACC Pitcher of the Week is Clemson freshman right-hander Mack Anglin. He set career highs in innings pitched and strikeouts by going 6.1 and punching out 11 in the Tigers 5-2 win over Wake Forest on Friday night. Anglin gave up four hits and walked three. The 11 strikeouts are the most by a Clemson pitcher this season. The two runs that the Demon Deacons did score in the fifth were both unearned. For the year, Anglin has a 1-2 record with a 3.23 ERA. Opponents are batting .217, allowing 13 bases on balls with 43 strikeouts in 30.2 innings pitched. He has made eight appearances with four of them being starts.

Check back next week for more from the ACC.