NC State baseball ahead of the curve, focused on tournament

N.C. State’s baseball team has made the postseason the hard way, and missed it completely two years ago. That’s why the Wolfpack made it a goal to try it the easy way this year.

After a 10-6 start in the ACC, so far so good for the Wolfpack, which won its fourth conference series over the weekend, taking two games from Georgia Tech on the road.

The Wolfpack (26-10) climbed in both national polls, up to No. 14 in Baseball America and No. 8 in D1Baseball, after winning its fourth ACC series of the season.

“It’s nice to be ahead of the pace,” junior catcher Andrew Knizner said.

That wasn’t the case for Knizner’s first two years at N.C. State. The Wolfpack missed the NCAA tournament in 2014, after starting 5-11 in the ACC, and rebounded from a 7-9 ACC start to make the NCAA field last year.

“That was something that the older guys talked about before the season started,” Knizner said. “We wanted to get off to a good start and play for a good seed in the NCAA tournament. We didn’t want to have to scrape into the ACC tournament and hope we got into the NCAAs.”

With one of coach Elliott Avent’s best hitting lineups, and a solid pitching rotation, N.C. State has ACC series wins over Notre Dame, Virginia (on the road), Wake Forest (a sweep) and the Yellow Jackets (on the road).

That the conference schedule started with two losses in three games to Boston College seems like an eternity ago for the Wolfpack, which is five games head of its win total from each of the past two seasons.

Other teams might have panicked after a series-deciding 1-0 home loss to Boston College on March 13, but this group has been resilient, Knizner said: “This team’s attitude and energy has stayed the same throughout the season.”

Given the number of games early in the Wolfpack’s schedule – they’ve basically played five times a week since the season started Feb. 19 – that hasn’t always been easy.

But Avent, in his 20th season with the Wolfpack, front-loaded the schedule. After Tuesday’s game at East Carolina and then a return game with the Pirates next Monday in Raleigh, the Wolfpack won’t play any midweek games for the rest of the season.

That means extra rest for the final four ACC series with Duke, Clemson, Louisville and North Carolina.

“It was definitely a test of our mental toughness,” Knizner said of the busy schedule, “but I think we handled it.”

Knizner said the Wolfpack has found its stride since an 8-5 loss at Florida State on Feb. 25. The last two games of that series were rained out, but the team came home and beat Charlotte 7-1 on the road on March 29 and has won 10 of 12 since.

According to D1Baseball, N.C. State’s 13-6 record vs. the top 50 of the RPI is the best in the country.

There’s still work to be done toward N.C. State’s goals, Knizner said, but being ahead of the curve, for once, feels a lot better than the alternative.

This story was originally published April 18, 2016 at 5:52 PM with the headline "NC State baseball ahead of the curve, focused on tournament."