UNC Baseball will play Virginia Tech in the ACC Tournament Quarterfinals

CHATHAM 07/17/24 Garrett Michel of Bourne dives back to first as Robin Villenueve of Chatham goes up for the throw. Cape League baseball Ron Schloerb/Cape Cod Times It’ll be an unfamiliar foe facing the Diamond Heels when they take Truist Field for the first time this ACC Tournament, namely the Virginia Tech Hokies. The 7th-seeded Hokies beat Notre Dame 17-10 during Wednesday’s action to advance in the bracket, and now UNC will get a look at one of the ACC teams they didn’t play this regular season.

The two halves of Virginia Tech’s season, particularly in conference play have been wildly disparate. They opened ACC play with series losses to Georgia Tech, Virginia, Stanford, Miami, and Boston College, sandwiching a weekend win over Duke. Other than Stanford, those are all pretty good teams, but starting out 7-11 in conference play was still far from ideal.

Since then, they’ve won 4 straight series, against N. C. State, Clemson, Pittsburgh, and Cal — a much easier schedule, to be sure, but they’ve also just looked better.

They win a lot of Sundays thanks to a deep bullpen and have had a knack for getting timely contributions with the bat without having a real star in their lineup, and should make the Field of 64 fairly comfortably. That said, the contributions they got on Wednesday were more than timely, as they put up a 17-run explosion for their highest scoring total of the season. ACC All-Freshman team member Ethan Ball reached base 6 times, with 2 home runs, 2 walks, and 2 HBPs, while DH Hudson Lutterman drove in a team-leading 4 while recording a 3/5 line.