After a doubleheader loss to No. 2 Wake Forest, NC State baseball has bounced back in a big way by winning its last five games, including a series sweep against Florida State this past week. With just over a month left in the regular season, the Pack looks to finish the season strong and set itself up for success in postseason play.
As of Wednesday, April 19, the Wolfpack are 25-11 overall and 8-9 in the ACC. NC State has 18 games remaining and plenty of opportunities to prove it should still be playing baseball in June.
The Pack has lots of games left on its schedule that it’s expected to win, including games against Clemson, the Citadel, NC A&T, Notre Dame, Richmond and Pitt. All of the ACC opponents on this list have a worse in-conference winning percentage than NC State, but are still relatively close, which means earning big wins against these teams will set the red-and-white up with a favorable seed heading into the ACC Tournament.
Luckily for NC State, all of these games — excluding a three-game series against Notre Dame — will be played at home, where the Wolfpack has a 19-4 record. It’s clear that NC State plays better in front of the Wolfpack faithful, and there will be plenty of high-energy baseball at Doak Field as the spring season comes to a close.
Starting Friday, NC State will face off against the Clemson Tigers in a three-game series, where it looks to collect another ACC series win. Both NC State and Clemson sit just below 0.500 in conference play, however, the Wolfpack is just above the Tigers in the ACC standings. A series win against the Tigers could create a snowball effect for the Pack, enabling the team to extend its current win streak and build momentum heading into the postseason.
NC State’s closest matchups will likely come against in-state rivals UNC-Chapel Hill and East Carolina. The Pack faces off against the Pirates on Tuesday, April 25, and starts a three-game series against the Tar Heels in Chapel Hill on Thursday, May 11. Both teams are ranked higher than the Wolfpack but can provide games for NC State to show that it can hang with the best of a stacked group of North Carolina baseball teams.
The Pirates and Wolfpack have already faced off earlier this season, when East Carolina bested the Pack 13-9. NC State has the better batting average of the two teams and is able to get on base at a better rate than the Pirates. While the Pack may be a better hitting team, the Pirates have a deeper pitching rotation than NC State this year and will make it hard for the Pack to score runs.
A positive for NC State heading into this rematch is that neither of the Wolfpack’s best pitchers were featured in the first game, so there will be an opportunity for either junior right-hander Matt Willadsen or freshman left-hander Dominic Fritton to dominate on the mound.
Arguably the most important three games the rest of the way come against the Tar Heels, who are currently ranked at No. 14 in the country. Against similar opponents, NC State and North Carolina have had similar results and on paper are very similar teams. These aren’t the best teams that these programs have produced in recent years, but any State-UNC matchup is a must-watch.
Ultimately, the success of the Pack9 stems from its depth at batting. Despite no individual player ranking in the top 250 in terms of batting average, the team ranks 28th in the country in that statistic. One through nine, NC State can get on base and score, so if the bullpen can find some rhythm heading into the back half of the season, then this team has the ability to beat any team anywhere.
