North Carolina State University Athletics
A Case for the Defense
6/1/2011 12:00:00 AM | Baseball
June 1, 2011
Baseball Headed to Columbia for NCAA Regional
Editor's note: Radio broadcasts of all of NC State's games this weekend in the NCAA Columbia (S.C.) Regional will be available for free on GoPack.com's All-Access service. Follow this link to get to the All-Access home page. The broadcast will be available at game time.
RALEIGH, N.C. – When NC State center fielder Brett Williams laid out parallel to the ground at the Durham Bulls Athletic Park and robbed Florida State’s James Ramsey of an extra-base hit in last week’s ACC Championship, the players in the Wolfpack dugout brushed off the spectacular play.
“A play like that seems almost routine for him,” said senior catcher Chris Schaeffer.
Never mind that several thousand people watched a grainy YouTube clip of the play or that ESPN had it as the top play of the day on SportsCenter. After careful consideration, his teammates called Williams’ catch his sixth best of the season. “Not his best catch of the season, by far,” said NC State baseball coach Elliott Avent.
It was just another example of why Avent thinks this might be the best defensive team he’s ever coached. Not bad for a team that had to break in a new center fielder (junior college transfer Williams), a new shortstop (sophomore Chris Diaz, a part-time starter last year) and a new second baseman (converted shortstop Matt Bergquist, who was moved in the preseason).
The Wolfpack has made just one error in its last eight games (a .997 fielding percentage), which includes a regular-season-ending sweep of Boston College and three games in the ACC Championship. The Pack will ride its defensive prowess into the NCAA Columbia (S.C.) Regional at South Carolina’s Carolina Stadium this weekend.
NC State will face Stetson on Friday in the opening game of the regional. First pitch is scheduled for 1 p.m. All of NC State's games in the NCAA Columbia Regional will be broadcast live on WKNC-FM (88.1). The radio broadcasts will be available for free on GoPack.com's All-Access package.
“Our defense has been outstanding all year, especially the last half,” Avent said. “It’s been as good as you can be. We've made the right plays at the right time and did really smart things with the baseball.
“I’ve said it all year long in the lockerroom – our defense has been the cornerstone of this ballclub. It’s what has carried us through the times when our offense and our pitching struggled a little bit. It’s what has kept this team together.”
The numbers back that up. The Wolfpack’s overall fielding percentage of .976 matches the best in school history, which was set in 2004.
For Avent, the play in the field was a godsend for a team that struggled out of the gate to put runs on the scoreboard and was unsure of its weekend pitching rotation. During one 11-game stretch early in the season, the Wolfpack committed just four errors, fielding at an amazing .990 clip (292 putouts, 116 assists).
“Defense has been huge for this team all year long, especially when we were kind of struggling with the bats,” Williams said. “We were just trying to keep runs off the board. It’s really important to have a defense that pitchers can feel comfortable throwing strikes to and letting hitters put the ball in play.”
The circus plays, like the one Williams made, are shoo-ins for highlight tapes. But this team has also been consistent, making all the routine plays and making the difficult plays look routine. Pitchers certainly appreciate that.
“You always have to play good defense,” Diaz said. “But this year we knew we would have to play a little more ‘small ball’ and that pitching and defense would be even more important, because of the new bats we were using.
“We just went out and tried to play hard.”
And that will be a key to the Pack’s continued success in the postseason.
• By Tim Peeler, tim_peeler@ncsu.edu.
