Coastal Division champion North Carolina and Atlantic Division champion Clemson are the top two seeds for the 2024 Atlantic Coast Conference Baseball Championship, which got underway Tuesday, May 21, and runs through Sunday, May 26, at Truist Field in Charlotte, North Carolina.
The championship will feature a pool-play format, leading into a four-team, single-elimination bracket to determine the league champion.
A consensus top 10 team in the country in the most recent national polls, North Carolina (41-12, 22-8 ACC) earned the No. 1 overall seed and will headline Pool A. The Tar Heels will be joined by eighth-seeded Wake Forest (36-19, 15-15) and 12th-seeded Pittsburgh (26-26, 10-20).
Atlantic Division champion and No. 2-seed Clemson (40-13, 20-10) will be the top seed in Pool B, along with seventh-seeded Louisville (32-22, 16-14) and 11th-seeded Miami (24-29, 11-19).
Earning the No. 3 seed, NC State (32-19, 18-11) is joined in Pool C by No. 6-seed Duke (35-18, 16-14) and No. 10-seed Virginia Tech (32-20, 14-16).
No. 4-seed Virginia (40-14, 18-12) drew the top seed in Pool D, which also features No. 5-seed Florida State (39-14, 17-12) and No. 9-seed Georgia Tech (31-21, 15-15).
Each team in the four pools will play one game against each of the other two opponents in its pool Tuesday through Friday (May 21-24). The four teams with the best records within their respective pools will advance to Saturday’s semifinals, with the winners playing on Sunday in the ACC Championship Game.
Highlander on second team
The National Fastpitch Coaches Association (NFCA) announced all-region teams Thursday afternoon revealing that Lexie Roberts has earned yet another impressive award being named to the Mid-Atlantic Region’s second team.
Roberts is the first Radford University Highlander since 2022 to earn a selection to an NFCA regional team, and the sixth player overall to do so. Roberts was previously named Big South Player of the Year, a member of the first-team all-conference and all-academic teams. This past season, she set top marks in the Big South for steals, hits, batting average and runs. Those same marks were all top-10 single season records in Highlander program history as well.
Her 29 stolen bases ranked 15th in the nation during the regular season. Roberts was perfect in center field, committing zero errors on 89 chances. Off the field, she’s achieved a 4.0 GPA as a sports management so far in her career.
RU left out of tourney
For the first time in program history, Presbyterian College is the No. 1 seed in the Big South Baseball Championship following the conclusion of the regular season this afternoon. The Blue Hose clinched their first outright Big South regular-season championship since becoming league members in 2007 and are seeking their second Big South Tournament title and first since 2021. The top four teams in the final standings qualify for the league’s postseason championship, which will be contested May 23-25 at Truist Point in High Point, N.C.
Presbyterian won the regular-season crown after finishing 18-6 (.750 winning percentage) in league play, while High Point is the No. 2 seed after finishing second at 17-7 (.708 winning percentage). USC Upstate posted a 16-8 record to earn the No. 3 seed, while Charleston Southern clinched the No. 4 and final seed in this year’s tournament at 12-12.
Doyle named director of recruiting
Virginia Tech women’s basketball head coach Megan Duffy tabbed Kathleen Doyle as the program’s director of recruiting and player personnel Friday.
The 2020 Big Ten Player of the Year, Doyle averaged a career-high 18.1 points, 4.6 rebounds and 6.3 assists while starting all 30 games for the Hawkeyes during the 2019-20 season. Doyle was named third team AP All-American and started 114 of 123 games played with Iowa from 2016-20.
A second-round selection of the 2020 WNBA Draft, Doyle played for the Indiana Fever for one season before playing abroad in Poland for AZS AJP Gorzow and later in Turkey with Bursaspor and Botas Spor through the 2023 season.
At Tech, she will assist with coordinating on an off campus recruiting operations, on-court basketball development, scouting, analytics, camps and student-athlete development program.
She was a three-time academic All-American and graduated with bachelor’s degrees in journalism and Spanish from Iowa in 2020.
Staff report
