Defense shines as No. 5 FSU Baseball knocks off No. 13 N.C. State, 8-1, Sunday
The Florida State baseball team’s defense made up for lost time Sunday afternoon.
After Saturday’s game was cancelled due to “field conditions and impending weather,” the No. 5 Seminoles came out for the series finale against No. 13 North Carolina State and played one of their best games of the year on that same field.
DeAmez Ross, Jaime Ferrer, Alex Lodise and Daniel Cantu all made sensational plays defensively, the offense had timely hits — including a 428-foot two-run bomb by Cam Smith in the first — and Carson Dorsey gutted out 5 2/3 innings pitched in leading the Seminoles to a 8-1 win over the Wolfpack on Sunday afternoon.
With the win, FSU splits the series with N.C. State and improves to 35-10 overall and 14-9 in the ACC.
While the final score might have been lopsided, the game was still very much in doubt in the top of the sixth inning.
Dorsey, who flirted with danger pretty much all game but battled through it and allowed just one run, gave up two singles and a two-out walk to load the bases. Connor Hults then came on in a 5-1 game to try to get the final out of the inning. And on a 2-1 pitch, N.C. State leadoff hitter Eli Serrano lined a ball to center field.
It looked like it was going to be a two-run single. Instead, thanks to a terrific diving catch by Ross, who was in the game for the injured Max Williams (who got plunked on the hand in his first at-bat), the inning was over and the threat was averted.
The Seminoles then scored three more runs in the bottom of the inning to blow the game open.
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Lodise, who also made a diving catch in the sixth inning, lined a one-out double to right field. Cal Fisher, who homered in his first at-bat, worked a walk; Ross followed with a walk; and Smith then drove in a run on a groundout in which Fisher avoided the tag from the third baseman. James Tibbs then walked in another run, and Marco Dinges drove in one with a sac fly to the wall in center — it was a couple of feet from being a grand slam.
The score was 8-1 after that, and Hults then shut down the Wolfpack over the next three innings, getting help from Cantu with a terrific play on a ground ball down the line in the eighth. The first baseman deftly backhanded the grounder and then flipped to Hults, who was covering the bag.
Combined with a Ferrer diving catch in left, which saved a run earlier in the game, it helped cap off a terrific day defensively for the Seminoles, who weren’t nearly as sharp in Friday’s 8-7 loss to the Wolfpack.
Florida State plays again Tuesday at home against Jacksonville before hitting the road for a three-game series at Pitt next weekend.
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