Wolfpack Baseball moves to 6-0
Tough loss for the basketball team tonight in Chapel Hill and best wishes to Coach Lowe to get better. It sounds like he was just taken to the hospital for fluids and precautions, so hopefully he will be back on his feet soon.
But, wanted to share some good Pack news today. The baseball squad earned a tight win over NC A&T 5-3. Freshman Sam Brown and a host of other pitchers got their first action on the hill, but probably most importantly Eryk McConnell got put in a typical 9th inning save situation with the game on the line and came through for save #2.
Looking ahead to the weekend the Pack gets their first real tests……..
…..In fact in the next seven games over the course of ten days the Pack will face three ranked teams and two powerful mid-major rivals.
This weekend at the Coastal Carolina tournament, State opens with West Virginia, but then Saturday goes against #30 Coastal Carolina (who knew the rankings went that high) and then TCU ranked in all four polls as high as #12 by the baseball writers.
Then Tuesday the 27th, the host always tough UNC-Wilmington. This is quite a baseball rivalry because UNCW plays in the strong CAA and generally gets in the tourney.
Then the following weekend, State goes to ECU tournament where they face another local baseball rival (ECU) and go up against #15 Pepperdine.
Ironically, our top pitcher Brackman will probably go in the two games that don’t appear on this list (WVU and WCU), so it will be a true test of how well our #2 and #3 and mid-week starters are against top competition. (Next day edit - Brackman will go on Saturday against Coastal Carolina, putting Stallings on Friday against WVU and Surkamp against TCU on Sunday. Not sure about next weekend’s rotation.)
This stretch will be a great barometer of where we actually stand going into the ACC regular season. No real predictions on this stretch from me because you never know how that first road trip will go, but hoping for great things.