Notre Dame baseball falls out of D1Baseball NCAA Tournament projection
Notre Dame might have played its final game of the season Friday night. The Fighting Irish lost to Wake Forest 7-5 in ACC Baseball Championship pool play to finish the conference tournament with an 0-2 record. D1Baseball.com’s Saturday morning NCAA Tournament projections did not include the Irish in the field of 64.
According to D1, Notre Dame (30-24) should expect to be the second team out of the tournament field heading into Saturday’s slate of action. The prominent college baseball outlet listed the Irish as the second team outside the cut line behind Arizona. NC State, Arizona State, Kansas State and Oklahoma are the last four teams in.
Of the five teams listed ahead of Notre Dame, Arizona is the only team still playing in its conference tournament. The Wildcats are up against Oregon in Saturday’s Pac-12 title game. Being that the Irish can no longer further their case to be a tournament team and are already outside D1’s projected field, it’d take a bit of a miracle for them to hear their name called in Monday’s selection show.
Head coach Shawn Stiffler‘s team had its chances. The Irish lost five of their last six games, including a midweek defeat vs. lowly Northwestern at Wrigley Field, and are currently riding a four-game losing streak entering the selection process. That won’t sit well with the committee.
Notre Dame led No. 1 Wake Forest 4-2 in the fifth inning Friday night. Then the Irish gave up three runs in the bottom half of the frame and never led again. The Irish were playing with desperation. They needed one more win, especially over a team like the Demon Deacons, to bolster their tournament résumé. Wake Forest, meanwhile, had already punched its ticket to the weekend portion of the ACC tourney.
The optics of how the Irish faltered in Durham, N.C., weren’t great for a team that was trying to make a run. Notre Dame lost to NCAA Tournament non-factor Pittsburgh 9-5 Wednesday. They were eliminated from making it to the weekend immediately. Every win counts in the eyes of the committee, though, so Friday was still meaningful.
The Irish simply couldn’t get it done.
If Notre Dame misses the tournament, it will be the first time since 2019 excluding when the 2020 season was canceled because of the pandemic.
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