Virginia Tech Baseball: Hokies and Heels Split Rain-Shortened Series

The Hokies (19-21, 8-12) rebounded from being swept by Miami last weekend with a midweek win over East Tennessee State (14-24, 3-9) and a split with No. 23 North Carolina (24-15, 10-10).

Wednesday, VT @ ETSU: W, 6-5

The Hokies ended their five game losing streak on Wednesday with an important midweek victory over East Tennessee State.

Alex Perez tallied all six of the Hokies RBI's including a ninth inning triple that ended up being the game-winning hit.

Packy Naughton started for the Hokies and allowed just 2 ER in his 6 2/3 innings of work. East Tennessee State struck first in the second inning off of Naughton when they turned a leadoff double into an early run. The Hokies answered immediately in the third with a run of their own courtesy of an Alex Perez sacrifice fly.

Perez gave the Hokies a 3-1 lead in the fifth with a two-RBI single that plated Logan Bible and Ryan Tufts. The Buccaneers battled back in the sixth with two unearned runs that tied the game back up at three.

Perez gave the Hokies the lead once again in the seventh with an RBI single up the middle that brought Rahiem Cooper around to score. Naughton's solid night came to an end in the seventh when Jeremy Taylor doubled to right field to even up the game at four.

Sean Kennedy, who ended up getting his second win on the season, struggled with his control in the eighth and allowed one Buccaneer run which gave them a 5-4 lead late.

Perez, refusing to be outdone by the Bucs, smashed a triple into the right centerfield gap that brought home two Hokies to give them a one-run advantage heading into the bottom of the ninth.

Kennedy walked one more Buccaneer in the bottom of the ninth but the Bucs couldn't scrape across the tying run as the Hokies escaped with a 6-5 victory.

Friday, UNC @ VT: W, 8-3

Hokies senior captain Alex Perez was in middle school the last time Virginia Tech managed to beat North Carolina. Head Coach Pat Mason was still an assistant at Northeastern. So while Mason may have been more focused on just getting another ACC win after a tough weekend at Miami, Perez and his teammates were determined to end the head-scratching 22 game losing streak to the Tar Heels.

"We came into the locker room today and we looked at the date, it was March (24), 2007," said Perez, referring to the last time the Hokies took down UNC. "We just marked it down and said it's not going to happen tonight."

With the help of sophomore starter Kit Scheetz, Perez brought the Tar Heel dominance to an end with an 8-3 victory.

Scheetz turned in a patented Kit Scheetz performance, one that saw him give up his fair share of hits, but all the while pounding the zone with his full repertoire of pitches.

That's exactly what Kit does," said Coach Mason. "That's what you're going to get from Kit. You're going to get some hits, you've just got to be patient with him and let them get their singles...That's a Kit Scheetz start."

After both teams left runners in scoring position in each of the first two innings, the Tar Heels finally came up with a clutch hit in the third when Tyler Ramirez doubled to score Landon Lassiter. Alex Perez had an RBI double of his own in the bottom half of the inning that scored Saige Jenco to tie the game at one.

The Tar Heels answered in the fourth with one more run off of Scheetz, this time coming off of a Logan Warmoth RBI single.

Scheetz settled in after the fourth and made quick work of the Tar Heels throughout the middle of the game.

"Those middle innings he sets up in the first inning," said Mason of his crafty lefty. "He can (throw) on both sides of the plate and gets them thinking a little bit. He tends to settle in the second and third time through the order because of that."

With Scheetz in complete control, the Hokies turned in a five-run sixth inning that gave them a commanding lead. Perez led off the inning with an absolute moon shot to right field that sailed over the English Field scoreboard to tie the game at 2. After Erik Payne singled to right in what Mason dubbed "the biggest at bat of the inning", Brendon Hayden clubbed a two-run homer to give the Hokies a 4-2 lead. Tech scraped across two more runs in the frame to extend their lead to four .

The Tar Heels cut the Hokies lead to three in the seventh with a Landon Lassiter triple that scored Skye Bolt. Knowing that their bullpen has had its fair share of struggles over the past month, the Hokies tacked on two more insurance runs in the bottom of the seventh. The seventh inning started with the Hokies sandwiching a Brendon Hayden single between two walks to load the bases for Sam Fragale. After falling into a two-strike hole early in the at bat, Fragale battled until he finally got a mistake from Spencer Trayner. Fragale pounded the high fastball deep into the left centerfield gap to give the Hokies an 8-3 lead. Count Coach Mason as one happy skipper when he saw the young Fragale heed his "be more aggressive" counsel.

"First couple of weeks he was in the lineup he went two strikes and was very passive, just kind of slapping the ball," said Mason. "Yesterday and today, it was just be a little bit more aggressive."

Luke Scherzer tossed a scoreless eighth and starter turned closer Aaron McGarity retired the Tar Heels in order in the ninth to give the Hokies their first victory over North Carolina since 2007.

Saturday, UNC @ VT: L, 11-10

The Hokies battled back from a disastrous start in game 2 but still fell to the Tar Heels on Saturday in an up-and-down marathon of a game.

Jon Woodcock started for the Hokies and couldn't get out of the first inning. He walked five Tar Heels and hit one batter before Coach Mason was forced to go to his bullpen just one out into the game.

After the brutal top of the first left the Hokies trailing by four runs early, Tech answered with four runs of their own in the bottom of the first. Erik Payne put the Hokies on the scoreboard with a two-RBI single that scored Alex Perez and Mac Caples. Brendon Hayden followed him with a two-run homer off of a 94 mph offering from UNC starter J.B. Bukauskas. Hayden said the Hokies were looking for fastballs early against the freshman flamethrower.

"We knew coming in that he was going to throw a lot of fastballs at us, try to beat us with his velo(city) and we were able to capitalize on it," said Hayden.

The Tar Heels scored twice in the third against Hokies reliever Chris Monaco to give them a 6-4 lead. Just as they did in the first, the Hokies responded immediately in the bottom of the third which saw Bukauskas's afternoon come to a close. After two walks to start the inning, Hayden drilled a double down the right field line to tie the game at six. Sean Keselica then singled to right to give the Hokies a 7-6 lead. Tar Heel reliever Trevor Kelly got two quick outs but then nailed Mac Caples with the bases loaded to let the Hokies take a two-run lead. UNC Head Coach Mike Fox apparently felt that the ball had hit the knob of the bat and was ejected following a long argument with home plate umpire Damien Beal.

The Hokies were unable to maintain their lead, though, as the Tar Heels jumped back ahead in the fifth with four runs off of Sean Kennedy and Luke Scherzer. Saige Jenco blooped a single into shallow left field in the bottom half of the frame to pull the Hokies within one. The Hokies then tied the game up at 10 in the sixth with a Sean Keselica RBI single.

A leadoff double by Elijah Sutherland in the top of the eighth followed by a sac bunt put the go-ahead run on third for the Tar Heels. Brian Miller then lofted a sacrifice fly to left to give the Heels an 11-10 lead. The Hokies couldn't get anything going in their last two chances as they fell to the Tar Heels in game 2.

"I thought we fought really, really hard," said the disappointed Coach Mason. "Once we got through the ugliness of the first four or five innings, we got the ball to Luke and Aaron and I liked our chances. It kind of turned into a normal baseball game...but they got the ball in their guys hand too and got the run in the eighth and we didn't."

Sunday, Game 3

Mother Nature hit Blacksburg with a sizeable rain storm on Sunday that cancelled Game 3. Due to ACC rules, there will be no makeup game between the teams that would count in the ACC standings. Coach Mason didn't rule out the possibility that the teams meet up for a midweek contest, though.

The cancelled game does give ace Sean Keselica another week to rest his ever-important left arm. Keselica had been pushed back to Sunday this weekend because of what Mason and he have been referring to as "dead arm", baseball lingo for arm fatigue. Keselica stressed that there is no structural damage or injury to his arm, just overall tiredness from a long season.

This Week (4/20 - 4/26)

The Hokies will make a short trip down 81 on Tuesday for a midweek game against Radford (25-13, 12-3) before an important weekend series at Duke (22-17, 5-15). The Hokies are hovering right below the cut line for the ten team ACC tournament, just behind Virginia and Wake Forest. Tech's final nine conference games all come against teams that are under .500 in ACC play (at Duke, BC, at Pitt.). While the remaining schedule sets up nicely for the Hokies to ensure themselves a spot in the postseason, Coach Mason is constantly stressing that his team must take it one game at a time.

"We just take it game by game," Mason said. "Each game we have to focus and do the best we can to get a "W". With social media and everything, these guys know exactly where we are in the standings. I'd be worried if they didn't. I don't know what they'd be doing with their free time if they didn't. So they know where we are. We're just trying to lock in one game at a time. That's not clich or coach-speak, you can't win two games in one night.

Hokies captain Alex Perez agreed and added that while the team hasn't played their best baseball of late, they still have a great opportunity to make the ACC tournament.

"We look. We're baseball players...We see what's going on around the league," said Perez. "It just makes us want to play harder, knowing that we're still in it after these last couple weeks where we haven't played our best."