“A couple things didn’t go our way, and that’s baseball.”
That’s how sophomore starting pitcher Sam Highfill (6.1 IP, 5 H, 3 ER, 6 K) summed up the No. 22 NC State baseball team’s 12-inning 8-4 loss to the No. 9 Notre Dame Fighting Irish on Friday, March 11. The Pack carried a 4-0 lead into the seventh but couldn’t hold on to win its ACC opener.
NC State (9-5, 0-1 ACC) got a great start on the mound from its starter. Highfill was dealing for the first six innings but ran out of gas in the seventh, giving up a solo homer that sparked the Notre Dame (10-1, 1-0 ACC) comeback.
Highfill ended the sixth with two hits allowed and no earned runs on 96 pitches, but head coach Elliott Avent elected to send his starter out for seventh. Notre Dame’s Carson Putz immediately capitalized on an overstretched Highfill for a solo bomb to left to put the Fighting Irish on the board.
Avent sent out a few relievers that eventually managed to stop the bleeding. Senior southpaw Canaan Silver (0.2 IP, H) got NC State out of the seventh with a 4-3 lead before sophomore right-hander Garrett Payne (1.0 IP, 2 H, ER, BB, 2 K) slowed the Fighting Irish bats to just a one-run eighth. Still, the Pack saw its four-run lead vanish in less than two innings.
“We’ve got to figure our bullpen out,” Avent said. “We’ve got to figure out what guys we can go to. I thought Payne pitched well. I thought Silver did what he always does. But [Notre Dame] got a couple key hits, one against Silver and one against Payne.”
Sophomore lefty Chris Villaman (3.1 IP, 2 H, 2 ER, 3 K) started the ninth on the mound for the Wolfpack, setting up an epic bullpen battle between him and Notre Dame right-hander Ryan McLinskey. Sophomore first baseman LuJames Groover III (2-5) singled off McLinskey to start the bottom of the eighth, but McLinskey proceeded to retire the next nine batters in order including six strikeouts.
Villaman went toe-to-toe with McLinskey for three innings, stringing together 10 consecutive outs of his own before the levee finally broke. The Wolfpack lefty notched his third strikeout of the evening to start the 12th, but a towering solo homer by Zack Prajzner put the Fighting Irish in front for good.
By this point, the rainclouds that loomed overhead for the latter portion of the game started to rain down on the field and affect the game. Villaman seemed to struggle to grip the ball, allowing a single and wild pitch before a four-pitch walk ended his outing.
Freshman right-hander Carson Kelly (0.2 IP, 2 H, 0 ER, K) didn’t fare much better. He threw a wild pitch to the very next batter but couldn’t hold onto the ball when he covered home plate, allowing the other runner to advance to third on an error. Kelly managed to get a strikeout for the second out, but an errant throw by redshirt junior third baseman Josh Hood (1-4, 3 RBI) and an RBI double by Danny Neri extended the inning. The Wolfpack only managed to escape when Neri got tagged out by Hood after getting caught in a pickle trying to score on an infield single.
Hood was one of the few NC State batters to have a memorable day at the plate. Notre Dame shut out the Pack from the fourth inning onward, but Hood did a big chunk of the damage that got his team to a 4-0 lead in the first place. His first-inning ground out opened the scoring, and the two-out single Hood laced through the left side stretched State’s lead to 4-0.
Other than that, however, the Wolfpack struggled to do much offensively. Freshman first baseman Tommy White (2-6, 3 K) and freshman catcher Jacob Cozart (1-5, 3 K) both struck out three times, and the Pack went down on strikes 15 times in total. Combined with just one extra-base hit, NC State simply did not get the job done for most of the game.
“After the 4-0 lead, we got nothing,” Avent said. “For the next whatever it was, you can count them up. The next seven or eight innings, we had nothing. Their bullpen was that good.”
The Wolfpack will have an opportunity to rebound on Saturday, March 12 when it faces off against Notre Dame once more. First pitch is scheduled for 2 p.m.
