BALTIMORE, Maryland May 24, 2014 - If someone would have told you on, say, last Monday that in today's ACC Tournament game against North Carolina, the Maryland Coach would use only the pitchers he does not expect to use in any future ACC Tournament or NCAA Tournament Game, while North Carolina would use their front-line pitchers, and despite this the game would be tied going into the 8th inning, you would have thought that person had been out in the sun way too long. And yet, that is exactly what happened. North Carolina finally jumped on that contingent of Maryland pitchers in the 8th inning to defeat the Terps Saturday in the final day of Pool Play. Maryland Coach John Szefc said afterwards that he was very impressed with his players and the way they played.
Szefc went on to say that he is sure his team is really ready for Sunday's showdown with Georgia Tech, a one-game winner-take-all ACC Championship (1 pm, ESPN2). If Maryland can win, it will be their first-ever ACC Tournament Championship - in their final year in the conference - and will gain them the conference's only automatic berth in the NCAA Tournament, starting next weekend. If Maryland loses, it will have to wait for Monday's announcement of the Tournament Field to determine who they will play and where. I'm leaving out the if because Maryland's performance in this Tournament has erased any lingering doubt as to whether they will get their first NCAA berth since 1971. For the record, Maryland last played in the ACC Tournament Championship Game in 1976.
For approximately the last month, Terp Coach John Szefc has whittled his pitching staff into two groups: the ones he will use in the ACC Tournament and the ones he does not plan to use. Every baseball coach with any high stakes end-of-the-season games on tap does the same thing. Maryland has two big game starters, and when we use the term "big game" we mean it in more than one way. In Jake Stinnett and Mike Shawaryn, Szefc has two hurlers he can throw in any game he feels he has to win. There isn't a team in the country who wouldn't want these two at the top of their pitching staffs. In fact, Szefc has to be in seventh heavan just to have two of these guys at the same time. They are not only pitchers that a coach would want to start in an important game, they are pitchers who are in their prime in the big game pressure pot. Both Stinnett and Shawaryn were in command throughout their performances in this tournament. They are great pitchers who shine when the chips are down. And because he has those two, Szefc makes every decision on pitching around them. I'm not privy to his thinking, and I don't know if he considers either of them available for tomorrow's title game. Stinnett would be the most likely since he last pitched Thursday in the late morning and early afternoon in Maryland's opening win over powerful Virginia. If you take the number of hours from when he finished Thursday until he would start Sunday, it would look like almost three days to the minute. That's not perfect, but it's not bad either. And since all starters throw regularly in between starts, Stinnett should at least be available on Sunday for a few innings. In fact, Szefc may have previewed what Stinnett is capable of when Marylan concluded their regular season against West Virginia on May 13. That game was played on a Tuesday after Stinnett pitched on Friday night against Pittsburgh. Szefc used him as his closer that day. He had three and one-half days of rest when he came in against the Mountaineers and struck out all three hitters he faced. Look for Stinnett in Sunday's game. Whether Szefc ramps it up and starts him is another issue. I really think he would like to have the senior available late in the game. Shawaryn, who pitched Friday, would have almost two days to the minute of rest, and he is a big man. But he is also a freshman. Unless there is some single hitter Szefc has in mind, I don't think Shawaryn will be used. The rest of the front line pitchers include the Terps No. 3 Starter, Jake Drossner. A Sophmore Southpaw, Drossner's numbers are excellant. In 11 pitching appearances, 10 of them starts, Drossner is 4-1, with an ERA of 2.18. In 53 and two-thirds innings he has given up only 45 hits while striking out 53 opponent hitters. If there is a bit of a caution on Drossner it is his overall lack of endurance. It is reflected in the fact that he has only half as many decisions as starts. Starters, of course, by rule must last five winnings to get a win. However on Sunday in the one game for all the marbles situation, all hands will be on deck, meaning everybody will be available. If Drossner can go five solid innings, Maryland should be able to cover the other innings. Drossner started against Georgia Tech about one month ago in College Park. His line for the game doesn't look at all good: six innings, eight hits, six runs. But it would be about the most misleading line of the season. Tech got three runs in the third inning on an assortment of seeing eye singles, including an infield hit that somehow drove in two of the runs. Drossner started the inning by allowing the first three batters to reach on two singles and a walk. The fourth hitter then singled to drive in one run. Then the Maryland hurler got Tech's Daniel Spingola to pop out, and then he struck out the Yellowjackets' no. 3 hitter, Matt Gonzalez. The next hitter, Tech's Thomas Smith, hit a ground ball toward second base that turned into an infield hit, with two runs scoring. The other three runs scored in the sixth inning, Drossner's final inning of work. On a day when he threw 106 pitches, two men reached base in that sixth inning on two Maryland errors. Then Drossner made a mistake and gave up a three run homer by the Georgia Tech catcher, Arden Pabst, the 8th hitter in the order.
After Drossner, Maryland and Szefc rely on Ben Brewster, the tall side-arming left hander who is, really, a specialist the Terps use to get out tough left-handed hitters. Along with Brewster is Bobby Ruse. Like the other pitchers Szefc uses in big games, Ruse has great numbers: coming into the tournament he was 7-2 with an ERA of 2.82. In 54 and one-third innings, spread over 26 appearances, Ruse had surrendered only 40 hits. The down side to Ruse is that there are games when he just doesn't have it. One of those games was Friday's win over Florida State, when the Seminoles shelled him for two hits and two runs in an outing in which he could not get anybody out. Normally with a guy like Ruse you say if he doesn't have it, get him out of there. But in a game like Friday, when he entered the game in the eighth inning with one man on and nobody out, then proceeded to give up two straight hits before Szefc could get him out of the game, too much damage can be done in too short a period of time. The other pitcher that will see action, if not Sunday then certainly in the NCAA tournament, is Maryland's closer, Kevin Mooney. Mooney has come up big in this tournament, but it wasn't without its nail-biting moments. Against Virginia, Szefc summonsed him to start the ninth with Marland up by three runs. He proceeded to walk the first hitter and give up a home run to the second. He then walked the next hitter, before pulling himself together to get the next three men in order. But the second out was a screaming line drive headed for the left center field power alley. Then, in a flash, Terp Shortstop Blake Schmit launched himself skyward and snatched the line drive out of the air with an outstretched glove at the very top of his leap. Things were far better on Friday, when Szefc had to go to him with nobody out, two runs in and two men on. In that acid test for a closer, Mooney proceeded to strike out the first batter he faced, then, after throwing a wild pitch which allowed FSU's third run to score, and walking a hitter, he struck out the next two to get Maryland out of the inning still two runs ahead. In the ninth, he retired the Seminoles in one-two-three order. Going into the tournament Mooney had a 1-1 record with ten saves and a 3.52 ERA. In 30 and two-thirds innings he had given up only 26 hits while striking out a breath-taking 42 hitters. Of course he now has 12 saves after notching two more in this tournament.
None of these pitchers saw action today when North Carolina scored 13 runs. Szefc did use the same starting line-up he has used in the other two games of the tournament, although he did get both Mike Montville and Kyle Convissar one at bat each. Six different Terps were credited with runs batted in for the game and hot-hitting Kevin Martir had two, both of them on his fourth home run of the season in the third inning. Trailing 7-2 entering the seventh inning, the Terps scored five times to tie the score. Three of the runs scored on two-out hits.
ACC Championship Game on Sunday featuring Maryland. Who'd of thunk it?
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