Four days after a heart-breaking 8-4 loss to Clemson in the ACC Tournament’s championship game, N.C. State (38-21) arrived in Austin, Texas, yesterday as it readies for a noon matchup with Stanford tomorrow in the NCAA Tournament.
In the ACC Tournament, the Wolfpack defeated North Carolina, 9-3, Virginia, 4-3, and Florida State, 8-7, while also losing to the Seminoles 3-7 earlier in the Jacksonville, Fla., tournament. The win over the struggling Tar Heels was the first win against Carolina for State this season — the two teams played a three-game series in late April.
Redshirt junior first baseman Aaron Bates said beating North Carolina — and especially its star pitcher, Andrew Miller — gave State momentum for the rest of the tournament.
“When you beat a pitcher like Andrew Miller, you’re going to have momentum going into the next couple of games,” Bates said. “That was probably the best team win we’ve had all year in the sense that we beat a pitcher of that caliber.”
Coach Elliott Avent, however, pointed out Miller has only beaten State once in his three years at Carolina.
“Andrew Miller only beat us once while he was at Carolina, so we aren’t shocked that we beat Andrew Miller — let’s get that straight right away,” Avent said. “You face guys like that, and you better be good.”
Freshman left-hander Eric Surkamp started the championship game for the Pack, and after holding the Tigers scoreless through three innings, he allowed four runs in the fourth, which gave Clemson a 4-0 lead.
“I don’t really know what happened,” Surkamp said. “I lost my control a little bit. I made some mistakes here and there.”
Junior right-hander Gib Hobson said he felt the pitching staff really helped State to its success in the tournament.
“It was definitely time for our pitching staff to step up,” Hobson said of the ACC Tournament. “Our hitters had pretty much performed all year. I guess the one flaw in our team was the inconsistencies in the pitching staff.”
State will next bring its high-octane offense, ranked third nationally in batting average and sixth in scoring, to the NCAA Tournament, in which it will face a 30-25 Stanford team that will start 6-foot-7, 225-pound pitcher Greg Reynolds (6-5, 3.47 ERA).
Avent said he will start Hobson over redshirt sophomore Eryk McConnell in the first game of the tournament.
“It’s not that Gib gives us the best chance to beat Stanford — Gib and Eryk McConnell are two different pitchers. You pick either guy, and I’m fine with either guy,” Avent said. “The reason Gib is going to go first is because we feel he can bounce back the quickest and be ready to pitch in that Monday championship game better than McConnell will.”
This is Avent’s seventh trip to the NCAA in his 10 years at the helm of the team — in those appearances, he is 9-12 overall. He said he was OK with being a two-seed, but he was upset with having to travel to Texas.
“I knew we’d be a two-seed. I was hoping we’d be a two-seed,” Avent said. “I’m just shocked we’re going to Texas. We were a high two-seed, and we traveled to Nebraska who was a three-national seed. Texas is a three-national seed, so we travel two years in a row as a high two-seed. That makes no sense to me.”