NEWS NOW: In the ACC Tournament opener against Georgia Tech, FSU prevails and moves on….

Tuesday’s pool play opener between Florida State Seminoles baseball and Georgia Tech saw the loser forfeit their chance to play this weekend.

Link Jarrett employed eight pitchers, so it took a team effort, and the offense scored 12 runs to help the Seminoles hold off a tough Georgia Tech team. FSU would have lost this game earlier in the season, but the team’s maturity in holding onto the rope allowed them to continue dreaming until Friday.

The Seminoles scored quickly after taking the field. Marco Dinges gave FSU an early 2-0 lead after James Tibbs walked with two outs. This was the first of four two-run home runs that Dinges hit to dead center. With the same vacant look, he rounded the bases, sending a message to Charlotte that the Seminoles meant business.

As he recovers from an injury, Florida State’s Conner Whittaker only pitched two innings in the contest. A runner had two outs in back-to-back frames, but he dug in and prevented a run from scoring. John Abraham cut the margin in half in the third after entering as a substitute and giving up a solo shot right away. The next batter was given a walk by the rookie, but he ended the threat with two strikeouts and one out. Returning for the fourth inning, he overcame a mistake made by Lodise to strand a runner at third and preserve a 2-1 lead in the contest. To begin the game, the Florida State pitching staff kept GT hitting 0–5 with RISP.

Daniel Cantu’s two-run shot in the bottom of the period gave the Seminoles the early advantage. A fastball struck Jamie Ferrer, who remained on first base while the first baseman took just one swing to drive the ball 389 feet to the right. Drew Faurot drove in Alex Lodise with a tremendous two-run drive two batters later, bringing the lead to five. With a commanding 6-1 lead, the ‘Noles had advanced five of their first seven batters to base during the inning. Their ability to hit the long ball remains their calling card, and the offense is mostly dependent on the number of home runs they score.

Joe Charles pitched two scoreless innings for FSU in the middle frames. In the bottom of the fifth, 4-5-6 hitters crushed a long ball by Jamie Ferrer, who scored the team’s fourth two-run home run. FSU now led 8-1. He induced three straight ground balls to Cam Smith in the sixth, on five pitches, setting up back-to-back 1-2-3 innings just as the Noles were beginning to fade away.

Then there was an avalanche.

Cam Smith let the lead-off base runner reach base because he failed to field a difficult play at third. Joe Charles gave up two runs and three additional base hits before Brennen Oxford entered the game. Not much better, the veteran lefty gave up a double before getting the first out of the inning. With seven hits in the seventh, Georgia Tech scored five runs, and the score may have been higher if James Tibbs hadn’t flown out to end the inning with the bases loaded. With two innings remaining, a seemingly uneventful afternoon turned into a struggle as GT fell behind 8-6. Praise the GT lineup for having few holes and a.300 batting average across the board, but this pattern did happen.way too much this time of year.

In the eighth, Drew Faurot started the Seminole response with two runners on and one out.

at close the frame, he retrieved a ground ball, quickly tagged the runner at second, and fired to Cantu. He answered the bell with his bat, hitting an opposite-field double that drove Lodise into scoring position in the bottom half, after coming through with the glove. Before Tibbs opened the floodgates with a single that split the shift and drove in two runs, Max Williams kept the line going with a two-out single to score the second baseman. The ‘Noles led 12-6 going into the final frame after giving up five in the seventh. They answered with four in the eighth.

With this Seminole squad, though, things can never be simple as they discover what it takes to prevail when the games matter. After retiring the side in order to open the ninth, Connor Hults let up a lead-off home run and two walks, which prompted Link to go back to the bullpen. After Andrew Armstrong entered the game, a single put runners on base, and the head coach decided not to play around. Finishing off Georgia Tech, Jarrett called in Jamie Arnold, the ace of the Seminoles. After two runs and two batters, he recorded the game-winning strikeout, and FSU won game one in pool play 12-9. He nearly turned two on the first batter.

When it counted, the Florida State lineup delivered. They continue to hit home homers and scored eight runs or more in each of their four games this week versus GT. Most significantly, eight out of nine batters recorded a knock, and half of them had multiple, meaning that scoring came from all over the lineup. On the other hand, Tallahassee’s June will be brief if the bullpen is unable to seal games. For Jarrett, Arnold was a backup plan in case of emergency, and he broke through the glass to maintain their aspirations of winning the superregion. The Seminoles should just need to defeat Virginia on Friday in order to guarantee a top-eight seed in the SEC tournament, given that Georgia was defeated in the opening round.