After pulling off heroics in the 8th inning last night, NC State decided to make it even more exciting last night, shifting their heroics to the bottom of the 9th.
With #9 Duke leading 8-3 in the Bottom of the 9th inning, the Wolfpack would need a miracle, and sometimes you get exactly what you need.
Sometimes a miracle starts with a little bit of luck. With 1 out, Sophomore Josh Hogue grounded into a fielders choice, where as a result of an error, he ended up at 2nd, Senior Noah Outfielder Soles ended up at 3rd and Junior Shortstop Brandon Butterworth ended running across home plate.
Senior 1st Baseman Garrett Pennington would then hit a 3-run Home Run, cutting Duke’s lead to 2.
With 2 outs left, Sophomore Center Fielder Eli Serrano III hit a 2-run walk-off bomb, giving NC State a 9-8 series clinching win over #9 Duke.
Senior Starting Pitcher Logan Whitaker wasn’t great, but he wasn’t terrible either. He gave up 4 earned runs in 4 innings pitched.
Junior Win Scott pitched in relief for the first time since February 28th, giving up 2 earned runs in 1.2 innings pitched.
Freshman Heath Andrews was up next, pitching for the first time since March 10th, giving up 2 earned runs in 2.1 innings pitched.
Sophomore Derrick Smith picked up his first Win of the season, pitching a scoreless 8th inning.
Pennington, Serrano III and Junior Catcher Jacob Cozart all had 2 hits apiece.
Pennington had 2 Home Runs and 4 RBI’s, giving him 5 on the year.
Serranno III and Soles each had 2 RBI’s apiece, both coming off of Home Runs.
After falling out of the Top-25 on Monday, NC State has won 3 straight games against Top-15 opponents, and they will look to make that 4 straight tomorrow as the Wolfpack and Blue Devils close out the series at 1pm.
I feel like the final rotation is becoming more clear:
Dennis/Markell
Terry/Mav
Torin/Mav/Shaun
Abu/Darius
Kapita/Yurt7/Anya
I see less minutes for Darius, Anya, and Shaun. Although I would really like to see Shaun get more minutes. Darius should be ready to start by next season. Torin looks like he’ll lead team in MPG.
Team really attacked this game. Made their adjustments from last game and didn’t jack up so many long jumpers. Also helped that Mav wasn’t in the game so we didn’t have a lot of good shooters out there.
Ted Kapita. Wow man. 7 of 8 shooting, 17 pts, 8 rebounds. Hell of a 1st game. I feel like Kapita is going to squeeze the minutes from Anya and Hicks. It’s going to be tough when Yurt7 joins because there’s not going to be enough minutes for all the bigs.
Much better showing for Wolfpack. Torin was the man again. Maybe my new favorite player. Refs again were bad. 2 of the fouls on Dennis were just head scratchers? One on the blocked shot and the other on the scramble for the loose ball.
Very excited about Dorn and Kapita. It will be hard to keep him off the court if he continues to play like he did today. But having too many big guys and not enough minutes is a problem Im OK with.