This weekend’s baseball series with 8th ranked Florida State was a golden opportunity for the Pack9 to improve on their RPI of 69 and strengthen their case for a berth in the NCAA Tournament. After generally outplaying the Seminoles on Thursday night behind starting pitcher Cory Wilder’s best outing of the season, 7 IP with 10 K’s and giving up only one run on 3 hits, the Noles had a two run single in the top of the 8th to turn a 2-1 deficit into what finished as a 3-2 win.
On Friday, an old-fashioned pitcher’s duel. Brian Brown pitched 7 innings, at one time he had a streak of 15 batters that were retired, and only gave up one run on a seeing eye single in the first inning. However, that one run was enough as Florida State held the Pack to 4 hits in 1-0 loss.
Today, the bats woke up. Before I had even gotten to the game today, it was 2-0 Pack. Did I mention the bats woke up? How does a season long 19 hits sound? How does 11 runs sound? How does home runs by Jake Fincher, Andrew Knizner, Logan Ratledge, and Ryne Willard sound? Both Fincher and Knizner had 4 hits on the day. The pitching got a good middle relief appearance by Joe O’Donnell, which was good to see after a rough relief appearance on Thursday, and Will Gilbert picked up his first save of the year with a fantastic 1-2/3 innings to end the game.
This series, although it was lost, shows the team and the fans that they not only can the Pack9 play with the best, they can beat the best. Now, they need to take this confidence on the road for 8 of the next 9, with ACC weekend series at UNC-CHeat next weekend followed by the following weekend at Notre Dame.
Here is a video that the baseball media team compiled of today’s highlights.
Next up, visiting Elon on Tuesday.
