Halfway through the season, with a 4-11 conference record, amidst a seven-game losing streak and only two games above 0.500, it would be easy to hit the panic button for NC State softball, but let’s hold off on that.
Sitting at 11th in the ACC standings, the Wolfpack is once again fighting just to stay alive for the ACC Tournament. With an expanded conference, 12 teams make the tournament, and the Wolfpack sits just inside.
NC State holds just one more win than the four below it — little breathing room for the Red-and-White. And if recent play holds, the Pack may find itself on the wrong side of that 12-team cutoff by season’s end.
The Pack have lost seven in a row, but six of them came against two of the best teams in the country. Series sweeps to No. 10 Florida State and No. 11 Virginia Tech — the two teams who sit atop the ACC with one conference loss apiece — are not all that surprising.
Against the Seminoles on the road, the Wolfpack played well enough to have a chance to steal a win, its closest chance game in Game 2, where it lost 5-4 in extra innings. Against the Hokies, it was a much tougher pill to swallow.
Playing at Dail Softball Stadium with a theoretical home-field advantage, the Pack was swept by run-rule in Game 1, shutout in Game 2 and then shutout and run-ruled in Game 3. It was a series last year where the Pack stole Game 1 but was bludgeoned in Games 2 and 3.
Going from last year into this year, no one was picking the Pack to make a historic jump to the top of the ACC field — especially not a jump to win a series against two national contenders. Excluding those two series, the Wolfpack holds a 4-5 record in conference play — not great but not half-bad.
Series wins against Notre Dame and Boston College make up the four wins, while a series sweep to open ACC play against Georgia Tech adds in the three other losses. The Wolfpack still has three ACC series left to play and can’t walk away from those without a few wins. Against Clemson, UNC-Chapel Hill and Duke, the Red-and-White will have its hands full down the stretch.
What’s been the Achilles heel for NC State is consistent and productive at-bats. It seems to be a coin flip whether the Wolfpack offense shows up or not.
“We have to get a hit when it matters,” said head coach Lindsay Leftwich following NC State’s 3-0 loss to Virginia Tech in Game 2. “We need to have a few better, productive at-bats throughout the entire lineup, and maybe that would have put us in a little different spot.”
In eight games this season, the Wolfpack has scored eight or more runs. On the flipside, it has had 10 games where it has scored two or fewer. The Pack is a team living and dying by the long ball.
Currently, the Wolfpack ranks 28th in the country for home runs — a large part of that is junior catcher Hanna Church, who is tied for 17th in the country with 14. Despite those metrics, the team as a whole is tied for 86th in total runs.
Since the start of its seven-game losing streak, the Pack hasn’t crossed double-digit hits one time. It has four home runs in those seven. Not once did it have more than one in a game.
Despite three players having OPS percentages above 1.1 — Church, senior right fielder Taylor Ensley and redshirt junior first baseman Michele Tarpey — the consistency offensively hasn’t been there.
On the pitching side, the three-player rotation of sophomore Carly Maxton and juniors Wynne Gore and Rylee Wyman has been strong for the Pack. As a team — including junior Madison Inscoe, who has only appeared in eight games on the mound — NC State has averaged an ERA of 3.15, WHIP of 1.33 and batting average of 0.243. The pitching crew has done what it has been asked to do but can’t do much to lift a stalling offense.
For non-revenue sports, where money isn’t instantly injected to sign players and generate wins, developing a winning program comes from instilling a winning culture, and that takes time. Leftwich is only in year two, so don’t panic or give up on her or this Wolfpack team.
