Courtesy: NC State Eric Surkamp will start Saturday for the Wolfpack against High Point.
RALEIGH, N.C. — After a week off for final exams, the 18th-ranked NC State baseball team returns to the diamond this weekend with three non-conference games. The Wolfpack takes on Campbell on Friday at 6:30 p.m. at Doak Field at Dail Park, then hosts High Point on Saturday and Sunday. Saturday’s game will be a 6:30 p.m. start. Sunday’s game will start at 1:30 p.m.
All three games will be broadcast live on WKNC-FM (88.1) and on-line at gopack.com through the Pack Pass package.
NC State comes into the weekend at 30-13 overall. The Wolfpack has won 16 of its last 20 games and has not lost a weekend series since March 21-23. Campbell comes to Raleigh with a 17-28 record. The Camels have lost four in a row and six of their last eight games. High Point comes to Raleigh with a 17-24 overall record, but the Panthers have won four of their last six games and 13 of their last 19.
Junior righthander Clayton Shunick (5-4, 2.27) will start on Friday for NC State. Campbell had yet to name a starter as of late Thursday afternoon. Junior lefthander Eric Surkamp (4-2, 3.96) will start for NC State on Saturday. High Point will counter with senior righthander Ryan Basham (2-5, 5.40). On Sunday, redshirt-sophomore Alex Sogard (2-1, 2.84) will pitch for NC State against High Point’s Sean Murphy (1-1, 4.62).
NC State vs. Campbell: NC State holds a 39-9-1 advantage in the series with Campbell. The Wolfpack is 11-2 vs. the Camels since Elliott Avent became NC State’s head coach in 1997. Avent is 7-1 vs. Campbell at Doak Field and Dail Park, and 4-1 at Buies Creek. The Wolfpack and Camels last met in 2006 at the Doak, a 12-3 victory for the home team. Campbell’s last wins in the series came in 2004 at Doak Field at Dail Park, and in 2005 at Taylor Field.
NC State vs. High Point: NC State is 14-11 vs. High Point, a seriesw that took place mostly between 1971 and 1985. From 1971-78, High Point won seven of eight games from the Wolfpack, including four in a row from 1971-74. Beginning in 1979, NC State won seven in a row from the Panthers and 12 of 14 through the 1985 season.
NC State and High Point have met just three times since then, with all three meetings taking place since the year 2000. The Pack defeated the Panthers 12-3 in Raleigh in 2000, lost 9-6 at High Point in 2001, and won 12-3 again at the Doak in 2006.
Rankings and RPI: NC State cracked the national rankings for the first time all season April 14 when it appeared at No. 24 in the Rivals.com poll. Collegiate Baseball checked in moments later with the Wolfpack 28th.
NC State has moved up each of the two weeks since then. In the current national polls, NC State is No. 18 according to Collegiate Baseball and Rivals.com, No. 19 by Baseball America, and No. 20 in the USA Today/espn.com coaches poll. The fifth of the five polls, the National College Baseball Writers Association poll, has NC State at No. 23. NC State enters play this weekend vs. Campbell and High Point with a 7-5 record against teams ranked in the five national polls.
The NCAA released its RPI for the first time this season on April 21, and in the RPI rankings released on April 29, NC State was No. 8, the fourth Atlantic Coast Conference team listed in the top 10. Miami, Florida State and North Carolina occupied the top three spots, as they did in all the polls. NC State is 4-3 against teams ranked in the RPI top 10, 6-4 against teams in the top 30, and 9-7 vs. teams in the top 40.
Projecting The Regionals: These things are utterly meaningless, even moreso than the national rankings, but several college baseball websites are publishing their projections for the pairings for the NCAA Baseball Tournament. Four such websites put out new projections in the past week, and three of the four have NC State hosting a regional as a No. 1 seed, with East Carolina in the field as the No. 2 seed. Only Baseball America has the Wolfpack travelling, and BA’s projection is unlikely in that it has NC State back in Columbia, S.C., in a near-identical field with South Carolina and Charlotte and the Nos. 1 and 3 seeds, respectively. South Carolina, NC State and Charlotte were seeded 1-2-3 at Columbia a year ago.
The espn.com website has NC State hosting with ECU, Oregon State and Charlotte rounding out the field. That scenario also seems unlikely since Oregon State projects as a borderline No. 1-2 seed, and Charlotte is a lock to be seeded no lower than No. 3. The Raleigh Regional projected by the espn.com would have to be one of the most daunting four-team brackets ever.
Rivals.com has East Carolina, Mississippi and Xavier in Raleigh, while SEBaseball has ECU, Elon and Canisius. Just a guess, but the SEBaseball projection is the most realistic of the four, simply because it doesn’t repeat a field from the previous tournament, and all four teams are seeded properly.
Up And Down On Offense: Through 23 games, NC State was 14-7 overall, batting .266 as a team and scoring a mere 5.5 runs per game. Over the next 13 games, NC State went 11-2, batted .365 as a team and scored 9.1 runs per game. Senior first baseman/outfielder Ryan Pond led the Wolfpack during its offensive surge, batting .444 with five doubles, two home runs and 21 RBIs. Junior first baseman Pat Ferguson batted .400 with three homers and nine RBIs, junior outfielder Devon Cartwright batted .412 with two homers and five RBIs, and senior outfielder Jeremy Synan hit .404 with three homers and 12 RBIs.
In its last seven games — three at Virginia Tech, one at UNC Greensboro and three at home vs. Boston College — the Wolfpack has cooled off again, batting .278 and scoring 7.3 runs per game. Only Ferguson (.476-3-3) and Cartwright (.429-0-2) have continued to swing the bats with the same authority as during the hot streak.
The Wolfpack On A Roll: After going most of the month of March without winning a weekend series and struggling offensively, NC State has won 16 of its last 20 games heading into this weekend’s games vs. Campbell and High Point.
The Wolfpack’s hot streak has come largely against impressive competition, beginning with an 8-6 road win over North Carolina, currently ranked No. 2 in all the major national polls. The streak continued with a 4-3 win at then-No. 24 East Carolina, a 12-0 win over a strong Elon team (34-14 and in first place in the Southern Conference heading to this weekend), a three-game sweep of Wake Forest in an Atlantic Coast Conference and a 12-5 win over then-No. 24 UNC Wilmington (33-10 and in first place in the Colonial Athletics Association). Coastal Carolina, ranked No. 22 at the time and currently 37-9 and atop the Big South, ended the winning streak at seven games with an exciting 5-4 win at the Doak, but the Wolfpack rebounded to take two of three games from Duke three weeks ago, defeated No. 23 ECU 7-6 and Radford 11-2, then won two of three at Virginia Tech two weeks ago. UNC Greensboro handed the Wolfpack an 8-7 loss on April 23, but the Wolfpack rebounded by sweeping Boston College at the Doak last weekend, the Pack’s second ACC sweep of the season.
NC State is 4-0-1 in its last three weekend series, including a split with North Carolina. For the season, the Pack is 7-6 vs. ranked opponents. Since March 29, NC State is 4-1 against ranked opponents. According to the NCAA statistical rankings of April 28, the Wolfpack ranked third nationally in ERA at 3.19, and according to the approximated RPI report from Nolan Warren, the Pack had played the 15th-toughest schedule in the country.
Home Field Advantage: Since Doak Field reopened in 2005 as Doak Field at Dail Park following a $5 million renovation, NC State has been tough to beat at home. The Wolfpack went 27-5 at home in 2005, the fifth best home record since Doak Field first opened in 1966. The Pack went 24-7 at home in 2006, and finished 24-8 at the Doak a year ago. Off to a 23-7 start at home in 2008, NC State is now 98-27 at home since Doak Field at Dail Park re-opened in 2005, a .784 winning percentage.
Early Schedule Was Tough: NC State opened the 2008 Atlantic Coast Conference season by diving head-first into the deep end of the pool. The Wolfpack’s first four series all were against traditional ACC heavyweights — Virginia, Miami, at Clemson, at North Carolina. Miami (33-5 overall, 17-2 ACC) and North Carolina (36-7, 16-4) are ranked Nos. 1 and 2, respectively, in the latest national polls. Virginia (32-12, 13-8) is in the top 25 in Collegiate Baseball. In the NCAA’s latest RPI rankings, released on April 29, Miami is No. 1, North Carolina No. 3, and Virginia is No. 33.
With three weeks remaining in the regular season, Miami, North Carolina and Virginia had a combined overall record of 107-28 (.793) and a combined ACC record of 51-18 (.739). The Wolfpack came through those first four series with a 5-6 record, including a 2-3 combined record against the Hurricanes and Tar Heels.
The Race For First Place: NC State now sits all alone in fourth place in the overall ACC standings, 2 1/2 games ahead of fifth-place Virginia and 3 1/2 games ahead of sixth-place Georgia Tech. The Pack is 3 1/2 games behind second-place Florida State and three games behind third-place North Carolina, with six conference games remaining.
In the Atlantic Division, NC State has all but wrapped up second place, leading third-place Clemson by five full games with six to play. Florida State leads the Atlantic by 3 1/2, and the Pack and Noles play one another in Tallahassee the last weekend of the regular season. NC State plays at Maryland and Florida State plays at Clemson this weekend.
Miami will be difficult for anyone to catch, but the Hurricanes still have three games at Virginia Tech next weekend and a three-game showdown vs. North Carolina in Coral Gables the last weekend of the season. The Tar Heels are at Charlottesville to play Virginia next weekend.
Pitching Staff Stands Out Under Holliday: Tom Holliday came to Raleigh with a reputation as one of the nation’s best recruiters and pitching coaches, and the proof of his talent as a pitching coach is apparent with a look at the stats for this year’s team. Through games of April 27, NC State ranks third in the nation in earned-run average at 3.18. The last time a Wolfpack pitching staff finished with an ERA that low was 2.98 in 1992.
Under Holliday’s direction, junior righthander Clayton Shunick bossomed into a No. 1 starter. Shunick is 5-4 with a 2.27 ERA and ranks second in the ACC in strikeouts (71) and third in ERA and opponents’ batting average (.201).
In addition, sophomore lefty Jimmy Gillheeney emerged as a top-flight closer (1-0, 1.50, 10 saves), and sophomore lefty Alex Sogard has recovered from two years of rust at Oregon State to post a 2-1 record with a 2.84 ERA.
NC State’s starters under Holliday at 16-8 with a 3.89 ERA. Opponents are batting .253 against the starters, who have walked 84 and struck out 182 in 208 1/3 innings.
Holliday’s bullpen has been nothing short of phenomenal. Wolfpack relievers are 14-5 with a 2.35 ERA and 16 saves in 18 opportunities. Five different relievers have recorded saves, and nine have picked up wins. The bullpen has inherited 65 baserunners and allowed just 23 of them to score.
Courtesy: NC State
