For a team like Virginia Tech, who dropped its last five conference series, resulting in a 12-18 league-play record, the ACC Tournament provides one final opportunity to sneak somewhere it didn’t deserve to be after a tumultuous regular season. But the difficulty of its path considers that rocky year.
The 12th-seeded Hokies (30-24) will need to win five games between Tuesday and Sunday to take the conference and secure what may be their only way into the NCAA Tournament. They begin with a 1 p.m. ET contest on Tuesday against 13th-seeded Stanford at the Durham Bulls Athletic Park in North Carolina, where the tournament will be held.
For the first time in the event’s 52-year history, it’s a single-elimination bracket, with the bottom eight seeds playing on Tuesday and the rest with varying numbers of byes. All games besides the championship (ESPN2) will be televised on the ACC Network.
The tournament’s full schedule is as follows:
Round 1 — Tuesday, May 20
- Game 1: No. 9 Miami vs. No. 16 Cal, 9 a.m. ET.
- Game 2: No. 12 Virginia Tech vs. No. 13 Stanford, 1 p.m.
- Game 3: No. 10 Louisville vs. No. 15 Pitt, 5 p.m.
- Game 4: No. 11 Notre Dame vs. No. 14 Boston College, 9 p.m.
Round 2 — Wednesday, May 21
- Game 5: No. 8 Wake Forest vs. Miami-Cal Winner, 9 a.m.
- Game 6: No. 5 Clemson vs. Virginia Tech-Stanford winner, 1 p.m.
- Game 7: No. 7 Duke vs. Louisville-Pitt winner, 5 p.m.
- Game 8: No. 6 Virginia vs. Notre Dame-Boston College winner, 9 p.m.
Round 3 — Thursday, May 22
- Game 9: No. 1 Georgia Tech vs. Game 5 winner, 3 p.m.
- Game 10: No. 4 NC State vs. Game 6 winner, 7 p.m.
Quarterfinals — Friday, May 23
- Game 11: No. 2 Florida State vs. Game 7 winner, 3 p.m.
- Game 12: No. 3 North Carolina vs. Game 8 winner, 7 p.m.
Semifinals — Saturday, May 24
- Game: 13: Game 9 winner vs. Game 10 winner, 1 p.m.
- Game 14: Game 11 winner vs. Game 12 winner, 5 p.m.
Sunday, May 25 — Championship
- Game 13 winner vs. Game 14 winner, 12 p.m. | ESPN2
Tech’s potential campaign through the tournament begins with Stanford (27-24, 11-9 ACC) and Clemson (41-15, 18-12). The Tigers finished the season ranked No. 14 by D1Baseball, the same ranking the Cardinal held back in mid-March.
However, Stanford has gone just 6-18 in the ACC since, largely due to a near league-worst 6.39 team ERA. But while Tech hasn’t won a conference series since the beginning of April, Stanford closed the regular season on a high with a 2-1 shocker over No. 22 NC State. The weekend before that, the Cardinal took two games from Boston College, so it’s reasonable to say it’s hotter than Tech.
That’s because while Hokies’ offense has nosedived, the Cardinal’s has surged. It ranked sixth in the ACC in batting average with a league-play mark of .285 that surpasses Duke, North Carolina and Clemson and far triumphs Tech’s .243 rate.
Stanford doesn’t hit many home runs, steal many bases or draw many walks — it is at or near the bottom of the league in all of those stats — but it’s done enough by getting on base over the last few weeks. It typically plates a respectable 4-8 runs per game while relying on its pitching to hold opponents off. Much of the time, though, it doesn’t.
No ACC staff has allowed more hits than Stanford’s in ACC play, and only Pitt has surrendered more earned runs. The Cardinal do well to prevent homers — despite relying on pitch-to-contact arms — but league opponents still hit a .310 rate against them and have been issued 147 walks. Only Louisville, Wake Forest and Tech have allowed more.
However, the Hokies’ offensive struggles seem to be indiscriminate to the level of pitching they’re facing. Their offense will likely need to elevate to get past the first round, and even more so if they hope to defeat Clemson.
While no longer not considered a top-10 team in the country, the Tigers still stand at a level that Tech has not proven it can compete with since March. Like the Cardinal, Clemson gets on base more than it slugs, but it does it at a higher, more consistent clip. And it has the pitching to back it up.
The Tigers’ .409 on-base percentage and .248 batting average against is fifth-best in the conference in both categories. Only Wake Forest and the Hokies have more strikeouts. The team closest to reaching Clemson’s 21 saves is NC State with 14.
If Tech rises to the occasion and makes it past the Tigers, the Wolfpack is next as the No. 4 seed. It would be the first opponent that the Hokies have already played this season. They dropped the series 2-1 in mid-March but ended it with a 20-8 win in Game 3 that sparked a 7-1 record over the following weeks.
Despite falling to Stanford and Miami to end the regular season, the Wolfpack (33-18, 17-11) has been largely consistent all year. Though its statistics don’t jump off the page, it’s managed to win games with a reliable top of the order — Chris McHugh (.377 batting), Josh Hogue (.304, 10 home runs), Luke Nixon (.303) and Alex Sosa (.288) — and pitching star power.
Starters Ryan Marohn and Dominic Fritton each boast sub-4.00 ERAs and are top-seven in the ACC in strikeouts. NC State has three relievers — Andrew Shaffner, Jacob Dudan and Anderson Nance — who boast an ERA under 3.00.
Virginia Tech’s path beyond the Wolfpack is uncertain, but should it reach the semifinals, top-seeded Georgia Tech is likely its obstacle to the finals. The Yellow Jackets took two games from Hokies to kick off ACC play in early March.
With a seemingly impossible path to taking what has been a powerhouse ACC, Virginia Tech will hope to string together enough wins to at least be considered for the NCAA Tournament, though even that will require a storybook run.
The Hokies’ first-round game begins Tuesday at 1 p.m. ET against Stanford on the ACC Network.
