Longtime Clemson baseball fans might recall that the biggest comeback in school history came at the expense of N.C. State and a team coached by Ray Tanner, way back in 1995.
In Raleigh, the Wolfpack scored three and six runs in the seventh and eighth innings to take a 15-4 lead. Clemson's leadoff batter in the ninth struck out. A while later, the Tigers were down 15-7 and down to their last out. Matthew LeCroy later tied the score with a double, and Clemson won 17-15 in 10 innings.
That was a regular-season series. Last night's choke job came with a trip to the Super Regionals at stake.
Didn't watch it, but reading the details ... good grief. It's not as if TCU did a whole lot to surmount an 8-1 deficit in the bottom of ninth, later losing 9-8 in 10 innings.
The house N.C. State baseball Twitter feed was, well, Tweetless:
Here's the game story from Fort Worth.
N.C. State (36-23) led 8-1 entering the eighth inning, when TCU (47-12) used two RBI singles, a walk, a balk and a passed ball to get within one of the lead.
Then, in the ninth, the Frogs took advantage of another N.C. State mistake when Derek Odell scored on a passed ball that should've been a strikeout. Keaton Jones had taken the 3-2 pitch, but it deflected off Andrew Knizner's glove, allowing Odell to score easily.
In the 10th, after a second straight three-and-out at-bat by N.C. State, Elliott Barzilli poked an RBI single to right field, and it was over. The Frogs mobbed Barzilli and celebrated their fifth Super Regional berth since 2009.
N.C. State, which missed the postseason last year after reaching the College World Series in 2013, could only sulk.
"You never have the game in hand in this game, but we had it in check," Wolfpack coach Elliott Avent said, "and things just kind of unraveled a little bit. This game will give you a lot of enjoyment and a lot of disappointment, too."
Oh by the way...
Four ACC teams in Super Regionals ties the league record and marks the seventh time in 11 years with that many.
Should've been five...
A few more Tuesday links:
-- Also in the Raleigh paper, a UNC grad and former writer at the Chapel Hill paper says North Carolina must fire Roy Williams, remove the banners and forfeit all those wins.
Oh my:
Once I told former UNC athletic director John Swofford I wanted to write a story that, in part, looked into athletic department finances. Swofford placed his hand on my shoulder and said: “Now, Patrick, why would you want to write about a thing like that?”
So went my journey at The Chapel Hill Newspaper as I reported on stories that looked into how the UNC athletics department spent its money. Despite North Carolina’s status as a state-funded public institution, getting financial information from the athletic department was never easy. Then-UNC attorney, Susan H. Ehringhaus, would usually help the AD’s office erect road blocks, and it often required the help of N.C. Press Association lawyers to get UNC to provide the information to which the newspaper and the public were entitled.
And this:
Now that UNC’s house of cards has crumbled, damage control has been carried out, but with all the wrong emphases. The messengers have been killed (Rashad McCants and Mary Willingham), the news media have been bashed, basketball coach Roy Williams has been “dumbfounded.” Swofford recalls nothing. Some sacrificial lambs have moved on (Dick Baddour and Jan Boxill). And Dean Smith and Bill Guthridge are gone.
Now what? As much as it will hurt in the short term, UNC has to give Williams his walking papers. Williams, who likes to flippantly refer to the scandal as all that “junk going on,” is a big part of the problem. Despite his status as the state’s highest-paid employee, Williams did not do his job. At best, he is an incompetent administrator who failed to maintain control over the handful of athletes he was supposed to monitor. At worst, he knew all about the cheating and took a see-no-evil-Joe-Paterno approach, hoping his immorality would go undiscovered.
-- In a move that's about five years too late, ESPN takes Mark May off college football coverage.
ESPN will reportedly name a new trio for the much-maligned program that once featured Rece Davis hosting fake grade school courtroom debates between May and Lou Holtz. But with Holtz retired and Davis promoted to hosting College GameDay, ESPN has finally (thankfully) decided to go in a brand new direction for the show. Adnan Virk will host and be joined by analysts Danny Kanell and Joey Galloway. The trio will appear on both ABC and ESPN for halftime and postgame coverage.
-- Birmingham columnist Kevin Scarbinsky gives his take on the crazy UAB story.
Sorry, Watson Brown. Take a step back, Nick Saban. The greatest upset in UAB football history is no longer UAB 13, LSU 10.
It's the #FreeUAB movement over Watts and his backers on the UA System board of trustees. It's Blazer supporters doing what they almost certainly would've done a year ago, stepping up and showing their true colors, their belief in this school and this town, had they only been asked.
If the original strategic study had been done the right way with the best intentions, before any decision was reached to pull the plug, I believe this community would've stepped up to lift those programs from their death bed the way it's lifted them from the grave.
If Watts honestly wanted excellence for football, rifle and bowling from the beginning, he would've found a reputable firm to calculate the real cost, set that number as a public target and given everyone a reasonable amount of time to put up or shut up.
-- And this article says Mike Slive goes out on top.
Well, except for that back-to-back-years-without-a-college-football-national-title thing.
Serving as the commissioner of the league for the last 12 years and 11 months, Mike Slive described his time atop the conference as the "best 13 years" of his life last week as the SEC's spring meetings concluded in Destin, Florida.
Slive's news conference on Friday at the Sandestin Beach Hilton opened with him announcing that the SEC made an NCAA-record $455.8 million and closed with him announcing that he would retire two months early to officially pass the torch to Sankey.
It seemed like a fitting end to the Slive era, which saw the SEC significantly clean up its compliance issues, expand from 12 to 14 schools and launch the SEC Network last August which was the driving force in the league's record revenue this past year.
"I'm not great believer in coincidences," said Slive with a laugh, when asked about stepping down on the same day the league's record distribution numbers were announced. "But it's just the way it worked out."
The 74-year-old Slive – a two-time survivor of prostate cancer – said he felt the early transition was in the best interest of the SEC, so that the league could speak with one voice as it approaches a new academic year.
-- And we'll close with a topical music selection from the Counting Crows.
LW
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