For some of us, the last memories of ‘07-’08 Wolfpack sports is a good one: the great run of the baseball team that ended one win away from a berth in Omaha. Included in this run was a win in the first regional hosted at home for the Wolfpack (and two nice wins over a loaded South Carolina team in the process).
Tag Archive for 'NCS Baseball 08'
As you no doubt know by now, the Georgia Bulldogs advanced to the CWS yesterday, shit-canning the Pack Nine 17-8. I was disappointed, but in no way surprised or really upset.
Elliott Avent has been at State a long damned time. He has not won an ACC title, and twice bumped up against the “Sendek glass ceiling” - losing in the Super Regionals (i.e., Sweet Sixteen). His teams are consistently pretty good, but never great. Do I think Avent’s a great coach? No. Do I want him replaced? No.
The Wolfpack baseball team beat Georgia on Saturday10-6 and can punch their ticket to their first College World Series in 40 years with a win in Athens on Sunday!!
We cannot over-emphasize the significance of today’s opportunity is for the entire NC State Athletics Department.
Since Lee Fowler became Athletics Director at NC State, Virginia - whose overall athletics program ranks near the top of the ACC with extremely strong, broad athletic success - and NC State are the only athletics programs in the ACC to have failed to participate in at least a Frozen Four, a College World Series, a BCS Bowl, or a National Basketball Championship game.
The Wolfpack Nine will travel to Athens to take on the SEC regular season champion Georgia Bulldogs (18-6 winners over Georgia Tech in a decisive regional contest) in the Super Regional round of the NCAA baseball tournament, which opens at noon on Friday. Super Regional format has the host team “home” for the first and the guest team “home” for the second game. For that and more superfluous information that is a sure-fire cure for insomnia, I invite you to check out the NCAA Baseball Championship handbook. ESPN indicates we would be visitors in the third game, but I have no idea if the coin toss has in fact been conducted yet after looking into this (thanks for the heads up WolfpackCoach17). Yes, the Super Regionals are one step away from Omaha, home of the college world series.
Wolfpack downs South Carolina by a score of 2-1 while only allowing 3 hits for second time this weekend!
Baseball America has a nice article that can be read by clicking here.
In our NCAA tournament preview podcast last week, I said North Carolina State’s pitching was very good, but not great. John Manuel disagreed.
I was wrong, and John was right.
The Wolfpack has a solid starting rotation, but what makes its staff truly great is its deep, versatile bullpen. The strength of that pen was on full display at the Raleigh regional this weekend, and it came up huge again in Sunday’s regional-clinching 2-1 win against South Carolina.
Great night at the Doak as a horrendous umpiring crew still were not able to keep the Wolfpack from notching an important and impressive win over Ray Tanner’s South Carolina Gamecocks in Raleigh.
In fact, this win was so impressive and so important that it will easily rank in the Top 5 wins of the 2007-2008 season for all NC State sports.
N.C. State got everything it needed Saturday night to beat South Carolina. And for the Pack, it took a little of everything.
We’ve known the participants since Monday, we might as well meet them and look for things to watch for in the first regional hosted by the Wolfpack since 2003 (and the first in Raleigh, as the 2003 regional was in Wilson). Let’s take a look at some team stats first. RPIs are from warrennolan.com. State’s matchup with James Madison is slated for 7:00 tonight. Charlotte tackles South Carolina in the 2:00 opener.
Last week we ran a great entry highlighting the NC State Baseball program’s opportunity to deliver a much needed ACC Championship in a major sport. (If you missed the entry then you are not allowed to read further until you go read it).
Coach Avent failed to win his first ACC Championship in twelve years over the weekend, but the Wolfpack’s hosting of the “Raleigh Regional” provides an opportunity for the Wolfpack baseball program to at least make some kind of tangible progress towards something worth celebrating - the school’s first College World Series appearance in forty years.
SFN Breaking News: Sources close to the athletic department have indicated that USC and Charlotte will be playing in the Raleigh Regional this weekend. We will update this after the official brackets are released.
It has just been announced that NC State will host a baseball regional.
Wolfpack Club and current season-ticket holders can purchase advance tickets from the time of the announcement until 4:30 p.m. Tuesday. Tickets go on sale to the general public at 5 p.m. Tuesday.
All orders after 5 p.m. Tuesday evening are subject to availability and will be treated as general public sales.
The entire 64-team field will be announced Monday afternoon during a televised selection show, including the three teams that will play in Raleigh.
NC State has cracked the Top 20 in most national baseball rankings on the heels of sweeping Boston College this past weekend to advance to 30-13 overall and 15-8 in ACC.
The Wolfpack’s relative regular success in the nation’s most difficult baseball conference provides NC State fans with a slight glimmer of hope that NC State could potentially claim an ACC Championship in baseball. Such a title would be Head Coach Elliot Avent’s first in 12 years and the Wolfpack program’s first since Ray Tanner’s 1992 squad.
Just yesterday the N&O ran a Q&A with Tom O’Brien so today’s article focused on Elliot Avent in Technician fits nicely into the week.
Avent has coached at NC State for 12 years and “has compiled 443 victories, second-most in Pack history.” Whenever the media talks in total number of wins and not winning percentage I always get a little nervous. Remember how Herb Sendek had the second most number of ACC wins of any NC State coach? Of course, he had the second to worst ACC winning percentage. Thank God for Les Robinson and Todd Turner, eh?
Updated: Pack wins 7-6. NC State now sitting at #5 in this updated RPI Rating.
NC State (23-11, 10-7) is hosting East Carolina (26-9, 2nd place in Conference USA) tonight @ 6:30 pm in Doak Stadium. There might be a few tickets remaining only available to WPC members. If you are interested in going, then call 919-865-1510. It will be a packed house tonight at Doak with much of the stadium filled with purple and gold.
Mother Nature decided not to cooperate yesterday, so a double header is underway. I’ve commented on these before- I love double headers against a superior opponent, hate ‘em against inferior competition. The basic reason is, well, they’re hard to sweep! State took Friday’s season opener 7-2 behind an outstanding pitching performance by Clayton Shunick including a career high 12 strikeouts. So we need a split today to (1) win the series and (2) come out with a 0.500 conference record. A sweep puts State at 8-6 on the year, and in very nice shape after beating both ECU and Elon earlier (RPI top 50 by some rankings, with the former having previously appeared in BaseballAmerica’s top 25).
We had in depth comments in yesterday’s entry…so, we needed to stay on top of baseball. State comes from behind in the diamond to beat Carolina in something! Wolfpack 8 Tarheels 6
The Wolfpack, which improved to 15-9 overall and 5-6 in the ACC, carried a 2-2 tie into the bottom of the sixth inning, only to have the baseball gods conjure up a four-run inning for the Tar Heels on three hits, two walks, two wild pitches, a sacrifice bunt and a balk against starter Eric Surkamp and reliever Jake Buchanan. That gave North Carolina a 6-2 lead, but the Wolfpack rallied against the leading pitching staff in the conference, scoring three runs in the seventh and three more in the eighth to hand UNC only its second loss in its last 12 games.
……crunch….. Carolina’s third ranked baseball team beat the Wolfpack 5-2 yesterday (I thought we had some new authors who were excited about covering baseball on SFN? hello? anyone out there?).
The Tar heels are 21-4 overall and 8-2 in the ACC. After a one-hit loss to Marshall, the Wolfpack are tracking just perfectly to an average Lee Fowler led program with an indistinguishable 14-9 overall record and 4-6 in the ACC. The program could still squeeze into the NCAA Tournament on the bubble and make no national noise but still provide the Sports Information Department a chance to contrive a statistic about how many of our programs compete in post-season play.
Note: This is about, oh, 3 weeks late- but it is still relevant I suppose as a “getting to know you” for those not as attached to baseball as I.
Yeah, I was in the show…You know, you never handle your luggage in the show, someone else carries your bags. It was great. You hit white balls for batting practice, the ballparks are like cathedrals, the hotels all have room service, and the women all have long legs and brains. (Crash Davis in “Bull Durham”)
These are the four former State players you’re most likely to see on a major league roster in 2008. They are each either currently on a 40-man spring training roster or a non-roster invitee for their organization. We’ll keep an eye on these guys and update their progress regularly this season.
