Georgia Tech baseball coach Danny Hall’s job this week isn’t difficult just because he has to find video of a College of Charleston game. He also has to figure out how the Yellow Jackets can eliminate the NCAA tournament’s top seed on its home field.
One day after an unprecedented run to the ACC tournament title, the Jackets were placed in the Gainesville, Fla., regional along with College of Charleston and Bethune-Cookman to engage Florida. It’s Tech’s 26th bid in the past 28 seasons. The tournament selection committee tabbed the Gators the top seed in the 64-team field.
After Tech became the first team to win the ACC title as the No. 8 seed, Hall said, “now we’ve got to kind of gather ourselves for a couple days, have a couple good practices, go to Gainesville and hope that we can gather that momentum again for a weekend.”
Tech is the No. 2 seed and will play College of Charleston Friday in Gainesville. Florida opens with Bethune-Cookman on the other side of the four-team, double-elimination regional. The winner will advance to a super regional to play the winner of the Raleigh, N.C. regional (N.C. State, Vanderbilt, UNC-Wilmington and Sacred Heart) for a spot in the College World Series.
The Jackets have not played College of Charleston, which received an at-large bid out of the Southern Conference, since 2006.
“We’ll make some calls around,” said Hall of his scouting plan for the Cougars. “I think I actually have at least one game TiVo’d where they played on TV, so I’ll go check my TiVo box when I get home.”
Florida (42-18) has the makings of a juggernaut. Through regular-season play, the Gators led the nation in home runs, were ninth in ERA and first in strikeout-to-walk ratio. Four players – catcher Mike Zunino, shortstop Nolan Fontana and pitchers Brian Johnson and Steven Rodriguez – are expected to be selected in the first few rounds of the upcoming major league draft. That doesn’t even include ace Hudson Randall from Dunwoody High, who has a 2.91 ERA in 13 starts.
The Jackets counter with hot bats and pockets full of confidence. After qualifying for the ACC tournament on the final day of the regular season, Tech beat Florida State, Virginia, Clemson and Miami in succession to win its eighth ACC championship. The Seminoles, Cavaliers and Hurricanes were all named No. 1 seeds and regional hosts.
Tech first baseman and pitcher Jake Davies was named the Louisville Slugger national player of the week for hitting 7-for-16 with four home runs and 11 RBI in the tournament, along with a win against Clemson with six innings and one run allowed.
“If we worry about what we’re doing (and not the opponent), if we swing the bat like we did in the ACC tournament, and our pitchers give us a cushion, I think we’ve got a real good chance of coming out of that regional,” Davies said.
Tech’s is on a precarious path. The No. 1 overall seed has reached the College World Series seven of the past eight years. It’s also the first time that Tech has opened the NCAA tournament outside of the state of Georgia since 1998. In the Jackets’ last 11 NCAA appearances, they were sent to Athens twice and played well enough in the regular season to earn the right to open at home nine times.
By winning percentage, Tech’s 36-24 record going into the tournament is the second lowest in Hall’s 19 seasons.
“If you look at it, sometimes it’s the worst teams in the regular season that become the best teams at the end,” pitcher Buck Farmer said. “I hope that’s where we’re going right now.”
