Notre Dame Baseball: Irish Getting Ready for ACC Tournament

It’s time for some postseason action for the Notre Dame baseball team.

After going 8-3 in their final home stand, the Notre Dame baseball went on a four-game road trip with a chance to finish the year at .500 or better. Unfortunately, they were swept in their series at Louisville and finished 24-28.

That last road trip got off to an auspicious start. The Irish scored nineteen runs (no, that’s not a typo) in a win over Northwestern. In the first game of their series against Louisville, Notre Dame scored three runs in the top of eighth inning to tie the game. The score was still tied heading into the bottom of the ninth, but the Cardinals hit a walk-off single to end the game.

The loss to open their final conference series seemed to kill any and all momentum the Irish had. The next two games were not as close as the first. Notre Dame lost 5-0 and 10-7 to close out the regular season.

What’s Next?

The Irish finished eleventh in the ACC standings, which is good enough to qualify for the conference tournament. The top twelve teams are divided into pools of three. Notre Dame is paired with Miami (7 seed) and Clemson (2 seed). Each team will play both of the other two teams in their pool. The team with the best record in each pool will advance to the semifinals.

The schedule for the conference tournament has been released. Notre Dame will play their first game against Miami on Tuesday at 7:00pm ET. They wont have any time to rest after that because their second game against Clemson is the following day at 3:00pm ET.

Blink and you might miss all of Notre Dame’s post-season action. It’s likely they will not advance past the opening round.

Despite my pessimism, there’s still reason for hope. Baseball is a funny sport. There is a fair amount of randomness that affects the outcomes of most games.

Although the Irish are in a pool with the second overall seed, their pool is not as daunting as it looks. If you combined the stats of the teams in each of the pools, Notre Dame’s pool ranks third in RPI and runs allowed. Their pool also ranks fourth in runs scored per game. (Those stats were courtesy of @ncaa_base_stat on Twitter)

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You can argue that Notre Dame’s stats may have weighed down those averages. However, you can also argue that Clemson’s stats weren’t good enough to elevate those numbers. Either way, the Irish have two somewhat winnable games this week. I think (and hope) they can steal at least one.