North Carolina State University Athletics
NC State To Face Virginia In ACC Tournament Opener
5/18/2003 12:00:00 AM | Baseball
May 18, 2003
RALEIGH, N.C. - The regular season is over. The championship run begins this week, and for NC State, ranked ninth in the latest polls, that means the Atlantic Coast Conference Baseball Tournament at Salem, Va.
The Wolfpack, seeded third, will open play in the tournament on Wednesday at 8:30 p.m. against sixth-seeded Virginia in the final game of the opening round.
Duke will play Maryland on Tuesday evening in the play-in game. The loser will be eliminated from the tournament, with the winner advancing to the eight-team double-elimination bracket.
Fifth-seeded North Carolina and fourth-seeded Clemson will square off on Wednesday at 10 a.m. to begin play on Wednesday, followed by top-seeded Florida State against the Duke-Maryland winner at 1:30 p.m. No. 2 seed Georgia Tech will play No. 7 seed Wake Forest at 5 p.m., followed by the Wolfpack and the Cavaliers.
NC State clinched the third seed with a 7-2 victory over Georgia Tech on Saturday at Chandler Stadium in Atlanta, salvaging the final game of a three-game series. The Yellow Jackets won the first two games of the series 8-3 and 9-6. Despite dropping four of its last six conference games, the Wolfpack enters the tournament seeded third for the first time since 1997, head coach Elliott Avent's first season in Raleigh, and the Pack is confident heading into the tournament.
"We didn't play well the first game at Georgia Tech, which was our first game after 10 days off for final exams," Avent said. "We played better the second game, but just didn't win. I thought we played extremely well in all phases of the game on Saturday, and I think that game will get us kick-started for the tournament. This team plays well in the big games, when their backs are to the wall, and your back is pretty much to the wall for five straight days in the ACC Tournament. I think we're ready and I think we'll play extremely well."
Aside from the conference championship, NC State will enter play in the ACC Tournament hoping to nail down a host site for an NCAA regional beginning on May 30. At 39-14, the Wolfpack has earned its first bid to the NCAA Tournament since 1999, but after spending the last six weeks ranked in the national top 10, the Wolfpack now hopes to host a regional at Wilson's Fleming Stadium, which was the site of four of NC State's regular-season games.
"After the season we had, I believe our players deserve to be a host team in an NCAA regional," Avent said. "We played a difficult schedule with 43 of 53 games away from home, and we won 39 games. We finished third in what many believe is the toughest conference in the country. I'd like to believe that we've already done enough to host a regional, but I don't make those decisions. It's out of our hands, so the better we play this week in Salem, the better our chances of hosting next week."
Redshirt-freshman righthander Michael Rogers (10-3, 2.76) will start for the Wolfpack in the tournament opener vs. Virginia on Wednesday night. Rogers has made 14 appearances, all of them starts, and has allowed 97 hits, walked 27 and struck out 96 in 104-1/3 innings. In his last start, May 15 at Georgia Tech, Rogers had the worst start statistically of his career, giving up seven runs on 11 hits in six innings of work. He struck out four and did not issue a walk, but took his third loss of the season, and lost back-to-back decisions for the first time in his one-plus seasons in Raleigh.
Junior lefthander Nate Cretarolo (4-3, 5.71) and junior righthander Vern Sterry (11-0, 2.71) will almost certainly be the Wolfpack's second and third starters in the tournament, but not necessarily in that order. Cretarolo has made 15 appearances, including eight starts, and has allowed 78 hits, walked 34 and struck out 56 in 63 innings of work. Sterry has made 14 appearances, all of them starts, and has allowed 81 hits, walked 30 and fanned 104 in 99-2/3 innings. Sterry, who has been the Wolfpack's first or second starter all season, worked seven tough innings May 17 at Georgia Tech and could be held back in order to get him an extra day of rest before his first ACC Tournament appearance.
NC STATE IN THE ACC TOURNAMENT: The Wolfpack has a 64-52 overall record (.552) in ACC Tournament play, which makes the Pack the fourth winningest team in conference history in terms of won-lost percentage behind Florida State (.702), Clemson (.659) and Georgia Tech (.565). NC State has won more overall games in the history of the tournament, 64, than every team except for Clemson, which has won 87.
The Wolfpack has appeared in the tournament finals nine times, second only to Clemson's impressive total of 20 finals appearances. The Pack has won four titles, which trails Clemson (8) and Georgia Tech (5). Wake Forest and North Carolina also have won four championships.
NC STATE VS. UVa, GA TECH AND WAKE FOREST IN THE TOURNAMENT: Virginia, the Wolfpack's first-round opponent, is NC State's second most frequent opponent in the ACC Tournament. The Wolfpack and Cavaliers have met 19 times in the tournament, with NC State holding a 12-7 advantage. Remarkably, eight of those 19 meetings have been in the first round, and the Wolfpack holds only a 5-3 margin in those games. Virginia has won four of the last six tournament openers between the Pack and Cavs, however. The last time the two met in the first round was 1997, a 4-2 Wolfpack win. NC State has won five of the last six meetings between the two in the tournament.
Against the other two teams on NC State's side of the bracket - Wake Forest and Georgia Tech - the Wolfpack has essentially broken even in tournament play.
The Pack is 7-6 against Wake Forest in the tournament, and 9-9 against Georgia Tech. NC State has won its last two ACC Tournament meetings, and five of its last six, against the Yellow Jackets, including a 6-4 win in the semifinals in 2001, and a 9-6 win in the third round in 1999. The Pack and Jackets have split four second-round encounters, the last being a 7-4 win for NC State in 1992. None of those four second-round games was in the losers bracket, and the winner went on to win the tournament three of the four times.
Wake Forest has a four-game winning streak against NC State in the tournament, including a 12-4 romp a year ago and a 17-4 thumping in the 2000 championship game. In second-round games, NC State is 2-0 against the Deacons, a 13-5 win in 1975 and a 7-5 win in 1996.
