Georgia Tech is turning tables again.
The ninth-seeded Yellow Jackets, who made the ACC tournament pool-play round Tuesday with a win over Wake Forest in the play-in game, dealt top-seeded Miami a 6-3 defeat Wednesday in Greensboro, N.C. It’s the third consecutive ACC tournament in which the Jackets have defeated the top-seeded team.
Tech plays Duke, which lost to Clemson 5-3 earlier Wednesday, Thursday at 3 p.m. (Fox Sports South) Ben Parr will start for the Jackets. He has a 2.44 ERA in nine starts this season.
Tech rallied from a 3-1 deficit going into the top of the sixth with two-run innings in the top of the seventh and eighth. Starting pitcher Josh Heddinger went seven innings, surviving a bumpy fifth, for the win. Dusty Isaacs earned his seventh save of the season and second in as many days with two scoreless innings to secure the game.
Tech improved to 34-24 while Miami fell to 40-16. With a third win of the year in four games over the team that was ranked No. 12 in RPI going into the week, Tech almost certainly has secured an NCAA tournament at-large berth.
The freshman trio at the Nos.7, 8 and 9 spots in the lineup, right fielder Ryan Peurifoy, third baseman Brandon Gold and catcher Arden Pabst, accounted for seven of the team’s 14 hits (Peurifoy was a career-best 4-for-4), four of the six runs (three by Peurifoy) and four of the six RBI (two apiece from Gold and Pabst).
Pabst opened Tech’s scoring in the fifth with a single that scored Peurifoy and then hit a double in the seventh to again score Peurifoy. Second baseman Mott Hyde followed with a sacrifice fly to score another run to tie the game at 3. In the top of the eighth, Gold hit a two-out single to score Peurifoy and Connor Justus (who started the two-out rally with an infield single) for a 5-3 lead.
In the win, the Jackets committed no errors and turned two more double plays, giving them an NCAA-best 68 for the season, four shy of the school’s single-season record. The second thwarted a two-on, one-out situation for Miami in the bottom of the eighth.
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