Pack Nine Providing Hope For a Title (FINALLY!)

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.

As anyone who reads this blog knows, the drought of championships in NC State’s Athletics Department is certainly not limited to the baseball diamond.

The following is a quick picture of the last ACC Championships won by NC State in the four major sports:

Football – last title in 1979; 7 total ACC championships
Men’s Basketball – last title in 1987; 10 total ACC Championships
Women’s Basketball – last title in 1991; 4 total ACC Championships
Baseball – last title in 1992; 5 total ACC Championships

Interesting, before Todd Turner became NC State’s Athletics Director the University had one at least one major championship under every AD in our history. Since Turner’s arrival and the general disinterest in athletics from the Board of Trustees and the Chancellors office (except for Marye Ann Fox – and you see what that got her!), no Athletics Director has needed to deliver results to remain employed by the University.

The ‘Pack Nine” finishes the conference season with road games at Maryland and at Atlantic Division leading, Florida State. The Seminoles are 19-5 overall and finishes the conference season at Clemson and at home vs the Wolfpack.

For more baseball, last week’s interview with Elliot Avent got pushed down the blog pretty quickly due to other breaking news. As we said in the article:

This year’s Wolfpack baseball team seems to be coming together nicely against a really tough schedule. Hopefully this team can end coach Avent’s drought and finally earn Avent and NC State a conference championship and/or Avent’s first berth to the College World Series.

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28 Responses to Pack Nine Providing Hope For a Title (FINALLY!)

  1. ncsumatman 04/29/2008 at 4:21 PM #

    I haven’t kept up with baseball much since graduating from Alabama, but didn’t the SEC used to be the best baseball conference?

  2. StateFans 04/29/2008 at 4:24 PM #

    ^ Yes. But, the ACC has the three top teams in the country – Miami, FSU, UNC….not to mention Clemson, NC State, Georgia Tech and others.

  3. hai17 04/29/2008 at 5:10 PM #

    Just fyi – wasn’t the last Mens Basketball ACC Championship in 1989, not 1979?

    On topic – State Baseball has been looking great this year, I’m just hoping we can finally host a regional – an ACC Championship would be gravy.

  4. StateFans 04/29/2008 at 5:14 PM #

    LOL! Sorry..Men’s basketball in 1987. That was just a typo. Sorry! THANKS!

  5. bradleyb123 04/29/2008 at 5:22 PM #

    Your points are pretty much right on target. I think the NCSU administration has no desire to bring back any “glory days” to NC State. Not sure what it is, maybe they just care about the money they make from us fans. But I swear, sometimes it seems like there’s a conspiracy against us winning any championships. Maybe there’s a Tar Heel somewhere high up pulling some strings. 🙁

    (Addendum — looks like someone beat me to the punch correcting the mistake…)

  6. cowdog 04/29/2008 at 5:51 PM #

    In baseball anything can happen. The only way we can host a regional is to win the ACC tourney. Which is not likely, but not impossible nor unprecidented.

    3 of those 5 ACC championships were back to back to back tourney final wins over highly ranked Clemson.

    They owned us during the regular season in each of those 3 years, but managed to break their hearts come tourney time.

    Hope the Pack keeps raking, ’cause they have to get thru FSU and Miami…2 teams we didn’t have to deal with back then.

    Go Pack!

  7. statemech 04/29/2008 at 6:26 PM #

    “In baseball anything can happen. The only way we can host a regional is to win the ACC tourney.”

    I think theres a lot more hope for us hosting than you think. ESPN’s Jeremy Mills has us hosting in his latest postseason projections

    ESPN projection

    and rivals.com projected us to host last week and likely still will when they update their projections tomorrow.

    rivals.com projection

    Interesting to note that in each of those they predict ECU being a 2 seed in our regional. That could make for a great ball game if it did actually work out that way.

  8. tooyoungtoremember 04/29/2008 at 6:39 PM #

    The SEC’s standing as a conference in baseball is much like the ACC’s standing as a conference in men’s basketball this past year. As a whole, the league is very deep with lots of quality teams. There’s one team at the top that’s dominating (UGA at 29-14-1 overall, 14-5-1 SEC) and the rest are failing to separate themselves from the pack. There aren’t any pushovers at the bottom of the SEC like the bottom-dwellers in the ACC.

  9. CStanley 04/29/2008 at 6:40 PM #

    Our school may implode if/when we win our next championship.

  10. leewolf 04/29/2008 at 6:53 PM #

    cowdog, we will likely host a regional if we can get to 40 wins. The team’s RPI is in the top 10 and we are likely a lock for fourth in the ACC. Also we are in competition to host with ECU (who we swept) and Coastal Carolina (whose RPI is only going to slide out of the top 20 from here on out). SEbaseball on Rivals has us as a projected regional host. Winning the rest of our OOC and doing no worse than 3-3 over the last two conference series will mean a regional berth IMO.

  11. hai17 04/29/2008 at 7:18 PM #

    Haha, I beat you to the punch on the Men’s Basketball, only I got it wrong myself…

    I’m with leewolf. I think that we can host a regional as long as we take a game from FSU and don’t lose more than one before then. A better finish would definitely solidify our status as a regional host. Of course, winning the ACC is always acceptable…

  12. cowdog 04/29/2008 at 7:29 PM #

    leewolf, has SE’Rivals also accounted for Carolina (Cary), Miami and FSU?

    I have heard that our bid to host is below all of those just mentioned as is our standing RPI and Conference.

    We are an “alternate” site at this time.

  13. gopack968 04/29/2008 at 7:30 PM #

    Regional is problematic with Carolina so close and sure to get one. Our problem is hitting. We have looked good as of late against lesser opponents, but the bats go silent against top line pitching. Exactly the sort we are sure to see in the ACC Tournament once we face Florida State, Miami, or Carolina.

    Most probable scenario is a late exit from the ACC tournament, a Greenville regional that we win, and then a loss at the next level. But hope springs eternal and the team is playing great right now…

    Go Pack!

  14. ruffles31 04/29/2008 at 9:03 PM #

    WV Wolf and I went to the game on Friday night against BC. We were impressed at how Shunick pitched. He has become a really good pitcher for us. I also was impressed at how fast he pitches. That is two games we have seen him pitch. Both games, a 4-1 loss to Duke and a 5-1 win over BC, only took 2:10 to play.

    I am hoping for a regional host. I do agree that possibly having 3 regional hosts within one hour (UNC, NCSU, and ECU) is not ideal for the selection committee. I would think ECU would get overlooked, especially since we beat them twice, but it all comes down to money and State may come out on the short end as ECU fans come out to Leclair stadium in droves.

  15. leewolf 04/29/2008 at 9:16 PM #

    I was under the impression that there was not a restriction on the number of regionals that one conference could host, but maybe I’m wrong. The close proximity of Cary and Raleigh shouldn’t affect the ability to host given the different fan bases and both schools have shown the ability to draw capacity crowds when playing on the same night. I don’t see how ECU could get a regional over us (even with us being the #1 seed) because we will beat them in every category (season sweep, higher RPI, and better finish in a better conference). Then again, wouldn’t be the first time we were screwed over by the NCAA.

  16. waxhaw 04/30/2008 at 6:29 AM #

    So because there is another great team nearby, we are penlized? That sounds like BS to me. If getting a regional is based on your RPI, wins, overall record, etc., then your location should have nothing to do with it. That would unfairly penalize clusters of good teams.

  17. Sweet jumper 04/30/2008 at 8:52 AM #

    I did not think coaches were allowed to be present for any workout that involved more than 3 players in the offseason. Does anybody know the rules? After the David Thompson probation, I am sure that we could not get away with this full scrimmage with coaches present.

  18. Classof89 04/30/2008 at 9:04 AM #

    Come on Pack fans, lets not wave the bloody shirt on this Obama pick-up game issue…will just make us look silly.

    As for baseball, the one hole this team seems to have is the clutch hitter who comes through against good pitching. If this season has a disappointing ending, it will be with a string of 2-1 or 3-2 losses in ACC and NCAA play…

  19. Noah 04/30/2008 at 9:14 AM #

    The NCAA has dropped a lot of the draconian rules-enforcement that were in place in the 70s. Hell, look at Alabama, they had a coach hand delivering cash for a player. The NCAA basically smacked ’em on the wrist and said, “Try not to do that more than once every decade or so.”

    You can make a strong argument that our punishment in 1989 was the last major penalty handed out by the NCAA until Alabama’s…

  20. RickJ 04/30/2008 at 9:26 AM #

    We really need to get our starting catcher, Chris Schaeffer back in the line up. He is easily our best defensive catcher and is batting .329. I am not sure of his exact injury but he has pinch hit in some recent games. Hopefully, he will be full speed for the stretch run.

    I think we are more in competition with Virginia than anyone else regarding NCAA seeding. Miami did us a favor by sweeping them this past weekend. Along with our sweep of BC, this put us in 4th place in the ACC. We also beat Virginia in our season series.

  21. SMD 04/30/2008 at 9:31 AM #

    ^Indeed. The story in the N&O today basically quoted the NCAA as saying yeah it’s technically a violation – but also an extremely rare circumstance.

    There’s no competitive advantage here. I am as hard-core anti UNC-CH as anyone, but it does make State people look pathetic. Apparently, there’s a big thread about this on PP. Ridiculous.

    Having said that – within the last two weeks, both of the Obamas have been at State and UNC-CH. The contrast in how the two schools treated such a high-profile event could not have been more stark. One school put their fingerprints all over a high profile event and inserted themselves into the story. The other one just rented their facility to a political campaign.

    I will let ya’ll guess which school was which.

    (NOTE – don’t turn this political. The point was about how the two schools treat high profile events. It could just as easily have been the two McCains.)

  22. Noah 04/30/2008 at 9:44 AM #

    There’s no competitive advantage here. I am as hard-core anti UNC-CH as anyone, but it does make State people look pathetic. Apparently, there’s a big thread about this on PP. Ridiculous.

    Completely agree. You’re a serious presidential candidate and you’re doing a campaign speech at Dook, at USC, at Penn State or UNC or any other high profile campus. You’re GOING to visit with K or Pete Carroll or Paterno or Dean/Roy if they’ll have you.

  23. Classof89 04/30/2008 at 10:04 AM #

    “The contrast in how the two schools treated such a high-profile event could not have been more stark. One school put their fingerprints all over a high profile event and inserted themselves into the story. The other one just rented their facility to a political campaign.”

    I agree, but, on the other hand, what major candidate wants to associate with the team that placed last in the ACC last season? Everybody loves a winner.

  24. PackMan97 04/30/2008 at 10:08 AM #

    “Everybody loves a winner.”

    Not true. Most politicians love losers (the poor) and hate winners (the rich).

    NC State athletics is the poor that needs a helping hand. Carolina athletics is the rich fat cat that has far more than they need and should be punished.

  25. graywolf 04/30/2008 at 10:19 AM #

    I am pleased thus far and I am hopeful for a college world series appearance, however, the proof is in the pudding.

    We have had an advantage this season……lots of acc series’ at home.

    I hope we can perform away in Florida at the acc tournement.

    Go PACK

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