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May 18, 2000

Box Score

2000 ACC BASEBALL CHAMPIONSHIP

FORT MILL, SC
SECOND ROUND

#7 VIRGINIA 9, #6 NC STATE 5 (10 Innings)

FORT MILL, S.C. – Virginia scored five times in the tenth inning to eliminatNC State from the 2000 ACC Baseball Championship, 9-5, at Knights Stadium onThursday afternoon.

Neither team scored in the first inning, but NC State scored one run in thebottom of the second. Mike Prochaska led off the frame with a single and camearound to score on Josh Schmitt’s RBI single.

Virginia, (25-30-1) answered with two runs of its own in the third. DavidStone singled with one out and then stole second base and moved to third on athrowing error by the catcher. Tim LaVigne doubled scoring Stone and thenscored on Robbie Marvin’s single to center field.

Each team scored a run in the fourth before NC State (30-28) retook the leadin the bottom of the sixth inning.

Jamey Shearin and Craig Lee hit back-to-back home runs to give the Wolfpack a4-3 lead. It was the first time that NCSU had hit consecutive homers thisseason. It was also Shearin’s second home run of the tournament. Virginiaforced extra innings by mounting a two-out rally in the eighth.

Stone drew a two-out walk and Michael Floyd and LaVigne reached onconsecutive singles to load the bases. Marvin then hit a ball back up themiddle that was mishandled by the second baseman, scoring the tying run.

The Cavaliers scored five times in the tenth to break open the game. With oneout and two on, Marvin singled to center field scoring the first run of theinning. Jon Benick drew an intentional base on balls to load the bases. Thenext batter struck out to record the second out of the inning. Ben Himes thenripped a base clearing double to center field for a 8-4 lead. Himes thenscored on a single by Hunter Wyant.

Dan Mooney homered in the bottom of the tenth to cut the final margin tofour.

LaVigne (4-0) picked up the victory tossing 4.2 innings allowing only threehits and one run, while striking out four. He also went 3-for-4 at the platewith two runs and a RBI.

Josh Schmitt (0-4) was saddled with the loss, allowing three runs in threeinnings of relief.

The victory was UVa’s first in the ACC Tournament since 1996. Virginiaadvances to play the loser of the Georgia Tech-Wake Forest game tomorrow atnoon.

VIRGINIA HEAD COACH DENNIS WOMACK

“These games are fairly difficult to play in terms of elimination games.You’ve lost your first game after you wanted to get off to a good start. Allof a sudden things aren’t going your way. It’s tough. They are not easy toplay.”

“I would like to commend both teams. North Carolina State played very hardand played pretty well. Obviously, we did too. It was not a sloppy game. Itwas a game that both teams went after each other very hard. Thank heavens forus we got a couple of big base hits and did some things we had to do at theend.”

Tim LaVigne put zeros on them for several innings. We needed him to do thatin order to be successful. He is one of the most competitive players on ourclub, and in the ACC. There is no doubt about it. Tim LiVigne is what we arelooking for. We ask a lot out of him. Wherever he plays he is going to giveyou his best effort.”

NC STATE HEAD COACH ELLIOT AVENT

“It was a good ball game. I thought we played hard in both ball games. Forsome reason we played with a lot more emotion last night than we did today.Going from 12:30 last night to 1:30 this afternoon might have had somethingto do with that. I didn’t think we played with enough emotion and weobviously didn’t pitch well. We had to bring Josh Schmitt in to pitch way toearly. He ran out of gas in the tenth and created some bad situations.”

“You have to give credit to Virginia. They are a good baseball team. Theyplayed well all year. They were a team that was hampered with injuries earlyin the season. Dennis Womack did a great job with that ball club.”

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