Notre Dame baseball awaits NCAA Tournament fate after loss to Boston College

When Carson Tinney swung through a breaking ball that started off the plate and tailed even farther away from his stance in the right batter’s box, it felt like his strikeout with the bases loaded and two outs might come back to haunt Notre Dame in Tuesday night’s (and Wednesday morning’s) ACC Tournament opener.

Sure enough, it did.

The Fighting Irish left the sixth inning knotted in a 4-4 tie with Boston College. And they left Durham, N.C., with a 5-4 loss to the Eagles four innings later. A bubble team going into the conference tourney, Notre Dame (32-21) is clinging to it with even more desperation than before ahead of Sunday’s NCAA Tournament selection show.

With that, just before 2 a.m. ET after the loss went final, it sank in for head coach Shawn Stiffler‘s team that everything they’d worked for in the last month and a half was suddenly out of their control. That’s a tough reality to come to considering for three hours and 19 minutes while the game was live, everything was in the Irish’s control. All they had to do was win a close game against an inferior opponent. They did not — for the third time this season against Boston College (27-28).

Now, they wait. Agonizingly.

“We can’t just sit here and say goodbye and hug it out right now because we are going to go through about six grueling days here it looks like,” Stiffler said.

Notre Dame left 10 runners on base and went 1-for-9 (.111) as a team with runners in scoring position. Tinney’s chance to break the game open in the sixth sticks out, but the Irish had plenty of other opportunities to cash in and keep playing in Durham. Plenty of opportunities to make sure that bubble wouldn’t burst.

They just didn’t make enough of them.

“We didn’t execute a lot very well tonight,” Stiffler said.

The Irish were in the game because of another solid outing from junior right-hander Rory Fox, who went 6.0 innings and gave up 4 runs on 5 hits and 3 walks. He struck out 9. His only big mistake was allowing a two-out, three-run home run in the top of the second. Stiffler called it “the biggest deciding factor in the game.”

Fox still kept the Irish alive for four innings thereafter, though. Boston College did not score again until the 10th on a single, wild pitch and another single facing Irish reliever Tobey McDonough. Seconds after pleading a “let me keep going” case to Notre Dame pitching coach Seth Voltz in the sixth, Fox induced a 1-6-3 double play. He got it started with a no-look, behind-the-back stab of a grounder hit sharply to the mound.

Tinney kept the Irish alive, too, with a tag out of a Boston College runner trying to take home on a wild pitch in the seventh. The ball bounced perfectly off the backstop to allow Tinney to corral it and step in front of an Eagle’s slide with ease. He got knocked in the head, however, in what turned out to be a scary moment that required Notre Dame medical staff attention on the field. Tinney still finished the game.

Notre Dame fans would certainly love to see Tinney keep playing in the postseason. He’s hitting .348 with 17 home runs. Whether or not he gets the chance will be up to the NCAA Tournament selection committee. Including the loss to Boston College, Notre Dame finished the season winning 16 of its final 20 games. Stiffler said he feels that should be enough to warrant an at-large bid.

“In tonight’s game we got out executed,” Stiffler said, “but over the last six weeks, nobody outplayed us, really, in the country.”