Notre Dame loses to Virginia Tech in ACC Tournament, ending Irish's season

The number of games Notre Dame needed to win in the ACC Tournament to earn a bid to the NCAA Tournament wasn’t wholly agreed upon. Some said five, meaning running the table and winning the whole thing. Others said four, meaning reaching the championship game. Some said three, which would have been a spot in the semifinals.

Nobody said one. But that’s all the Fighting Irish ended up getting.

No. 10 seed Notre Dame won its first round game against No. 15 seed Clemson on Tuesday, but No. 7 seed Virginia Tech was too much for the Irish on Wednesday. The Hokies erased an early four-run deficit to come back and beat the Irish, 17-10.

The defeat effectively ends Notre Dame’s season. If the Irish (31-22) indeed aren’t included in the NCAA Tournament bracket on Monday, as expected, it’ll be 0-for-4 for head coach Shawn Stiffler as far as getting into a regional goes. The last time Notre Dame played in the postseason beyond conference championship week was in the College World Series in June 2022.

What plagued Notre Dame at Truist Field in Charlotte, N.C., on Wednesday was the same thing as the Irish’s demise all season — pitching depth. Owners of the No. 12 ERA in the ACC, the Irish got through the first inning without surrendering a run.

But then they came in droves.

Virginia Tech scored three runs in the second and three more in the third. By then, the 4-0 lead Notre Dame jumped out to in the first inning had been completely erased. Six earned runs ended up on starter Ty Uber‘s ledger. Caden Crowell replaced him, and he gave up two earned runs in 2.0 innings of work. Uber lasted 2.1.

Notre Dame’s bats did the best they could to keep the Irish in it. Mark Quatrani and Jamie Zee hit home runs. Jayce Lee followed up going 3 for 3 against Clemson by starting 3 for 3 against the Hokies. Freshman designated hitter and nine-hole man Shane Miranda hammered a ball off the left field fence with the bases loaded to score three runs in the seventh. At that point, every hitter in the Irish’s starting lineup except for leadoff man Drew Berkland had registered at least one hit.

But in a game in which Virginia Tech was also scoring on home runs and hard hit balls — as well safety squeeze bunts in both the fifth and sixth innings — the Irish needed even more at the plate than they got to have a chance of surviving and advancing. It was always going to be a cobble together as many runs as possible type of game. The Hokies did the better of the cobbling.

Related: the Irish did the worse of the pitching.

Nobody in blue and gold had a stat line like that of Virginia Tech’s Logan Eisenreich; 4.2 innings pitched, 1 earned run, 6 strikeouts, 5 hits, 2 walks. He entered with zero outs in the first and nearly got his team through the fifth. Most importantly, he left the mound with the lead. Not enough Notre Dame pitchers left the mound with a lead this season, especially Wednesday. Notre Dame put 10 pitchers in the game. They all pitched with a deficit on the scoreboard at some point except for Uber. It was a 5-5 game when he exited in the third. It was quickly 6-5 thereafter.

The Irish have the ACC’s third-best team batting average but they’re once again out of the league tourney before the weekend begins. And they’re once again out of the NCAA Tournament without having been a part of it. They’d gotten somewhat close the last two years after late-season surges, but this isn’t horseshoes or hand grenades.

This is baseball.

Because of pitching problems, it’s baseball season no longer for Notre Dame.