ACC Baseball | Duke clinches ACC title winning 16-4 against Florida State in Championship

Duke and NC State played Thursday night for a spot in the semifinals.

Each team has won a game in pool play. The winner of this game advances.

The No. 3 seeded Wolfpack polished off Virginia Tech 19-9 on Wednesday. in a run-rule eight-inning affair.

Duke, the No. 6 seed, beat the Hokies 11-8 on Tuesday.

Through four innings, State and Duke remained scoreless but Duke's Chase Krewson opened the top of the fifth with a solo home run to give the Blue Devils the 1-0 lead.

The Blue Devils then loaded the bases with no outs and second baseman Zac Morris crushed a grand slam to center-left field to break the game open and give Duke a 5-0 lead. AJ Gracia then added a shot to make it 6-0 in a monstrous inning for the Blue Devils.

The Blue Devils tacked on two more in the top of the sixth to make it 8-0.

The Wolfpack is down to its last chance, batting in the bottom of the ninth.

The Pack gets a run in, but they still trail 8-1.

And it's a final. Duke advances to the semifinals with an 8-1 victory. The Blue Devils will play No. 11 seed Miami at 5 p.m. Saturday.

The University of North Carolina baseball team began its 2024 ACC Baseball Championship with three straight home runs.

Anthony Donofrio, Casey Cook, and Parks Harber all went yard in the top of the first. Luke Stevenson then struck out, but Alberto Osuna reignited the scoring with yet another solo homerun.

The Tar Heels put up 4 runs in the first inning, without possibly their best player even in the lineup. Vance Honeycutt, a high first-round MLB Draft prospect, who leads the Tar Heels in home runs and stolen bases, was not in the starting lineup.

No official reason was given for Honeycutt's absence.

On the ACC Network, UNC Coach Scott Forbes tried to downplay Honeycutt's absence.

"To advance we have to win tomorrow night, so I just wanted to give him some time to get those spasms under control," he said.

Ultimately, the game did not matter. With Pitt losing its first game against Wake Forest, the only game that could affect which team in Pool A advances to the semifinals is the game Friday at 7 p.m. between UNC and No. 8 seed Wake Forest.

North Carolina did end up winning with a final score of 12-2.

Cook hit two home runs, and pitcher Jason DeCaro gave up two runs over seven innings.

DeCaro gave up five hits and a walk with six strikeouts. Kyle Percival and Connor Bovair each pitched a scoreless inning of relief for North Carolina.

UNC swept the Panthers in Chapel Hill to open conference play and has won seven straight against them since Pitt beat the Tar Heels in the 2021 ACC Tournament.

The Associated Press contributed.

The Miami Hurricanes injected some chaos into the 2024 ACC Baseball Championship by beating Clemson.

The Hurricanes entered the tournament as the No. 11 seed, which is the next-to-last seed of the tournament. Clemson entered the tournament as the No. 2 seed.

Miami won its first game, upsetting Louisville 8-5 on Tuesday. That set up a chance for the team to advance to the semifinals by beating Clemson on Thursday.

And they did it.

Miami jumped out to a 1-0 lead in the first inning but then gave up two runs in the top of the second inning. The Hurricanes' bats remained hot in the bottom of the second, plating five more runs and giving them a 6-2 lead.

Clemson then put up a run in the seventh and two runs in the eighth to pull within one run.

Miami then hit a solo home run in the bottom of the inning. That insurance run proved to be monumental, as Clemson started off the top of the 9th with a solo home run.

Then with two outs, Clemson outfielder Tristan Bissetta hit a long fly ball to left field. Miami's left fielder drifted backward to the wall, jumped, and snagged the ball out of mid-air to secure Miami's place in the semifinals.

Clemson and Louisville will still play Friday, but the outcome of the game will not alter the 2024 ACC Baseball Championship.

The NC State Wolfpack won what was essentially a warmup game in the 2024 ACC Baseball Championship.

State's matchup against Virginia Tech on Wednesday was inconsequential to the tournament because Tech is the lowest seed in Pool C. So they had to win both games to advance to the tournament's semifinals.

State will play Duke on Thursday at 7 p.m. to determine which team will advance in the tournament.

When the two teams played back in March, the Wolfpack traveled to Durham and won two out of the three games.

Both schools are ranked in the top 25 and will play in the NCAA Division 1 baseball tournament no matter who wins Thursday. NC State is expected to be a regional host. Duke is expected to be a 2 seed in the regional they are assigned to.