NC State falls 1-0 to Duke in ACC tournament championship game

The ACC tournament title game featured the two hottest teams in the league, and wouldn’t you know it, NC State managed to squander another golden opportunity to break its ACC tournament title drought.

Duke’s pitching staff was tremendous this afternoon, and, well, that’s baseball sometimes. To stifle State’s lineup the way the Blue Devils did was impressive, as the Pack didn’t muster many scoring opportunities. But State did have a chance to tie the game in the sixth with a man on third and less than two outs, and that opening closed with a rather unfortunate decision not to try for home on a potential sac fly.

It’s a tough result to stomach since NC State’s pitching staff delivered a championship-winning effort. Those kids stepped up in a big moment, and on most days, the offense is going to make this kind of performance pay off. Alas, today was not one of them.

State just cannot get over the hump in this game.

Time to turn the page now, though, with NCAA tournament getting underway next weekend. NC State can ease a lot of the pain from today by making the deep run it’s capable of.