Notre Dame Baseball NCAA Hopes Take Hit With ACC Tournament Loss

The Fighting Irish have one game remaining at the ACC Tournament Friday night against No. 1 Wake Forest

Notre Dame baseball’s fading NCAA Tournament hopes took a big blow on Wednesday with a 9-5 loss to Pittsburgh in the opening round of the ACC Tournament. The loss if the fourth in the last five games for the Fighting Irish (30-23), while Pitt (24-30) snapped a three-game losing streak.

Irish starter Aiden Tyrell (8-3) was not sharp early. The lefthander gave up a leadoff home run to Pitt third baseman Sky Duff and yielded another first inning run to see the Irish fall behind 2-0 before coming to the plate. The Irish got a run back in the bottom of the inning with an RBI single by Brooks Coetzee, but the Panthers struck again with a home run by Justin Acal in the second inning.

Pitt, the tournament’s No. 12 seed, connected on five home runs in the win. Three of them came off Tyrell, who allowed 6.0 earned runs in just 4.0 innings. Irish reliever Radek Birkholtz pitched the next three innings and gave up the last two Pitt long balls.

Carter Putz and TJ Williams paced the Fighting Irish offense with three hits each. Putz collected two RBIs and scored twice as well.

Notre Dame has been projected to make the NCAA Tournament field for the past few weeks, but the recent slide puts their hopes of an at-large bid in serious jeopardy. They entered the day with the No. 47 RPI. That number is likely to drop because Pitt’s RPI was 75 entering Wednesday’s play.

The Fighting Irish still have one last chance to make an impression on the NCAA’s selection committee when they finish pool play with a Friday night game against Wake Forest. The Demon Deacons are both the No. 1 seed in the ACC Tournament as well as the No. 1 overall team in the nation.

The loss to the Panthers gives Notre Dame no path to advance out of pool play in the tournament. The Irish, Panthers and Demon Deacons each play each other once in the pool play rounds, with the team with the best record advancing to the semifinals. If there is a tie the team with the highest seed advances.

So, while a win over Wake Forest would boost Notre Dame’s RPI and add a quality win to their resume, the best record they can finish with is 1-1. If Pitt beats Wake Forest on Thursday, they would be 2-0 and automatically advance to the semifinals. If Wake Forest beats Pitt and the Irish beat Wake Forest, all three teams would be 1-1 and the Demon Deacons would win the tiebreaker based on their No. 1 seed.

The NCAA’s selection show will be this Monday, May 29 (Memorial Day) on ESPN2.

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