/
.
Cavaliers Head to Atlanta for ACC Championship
Story Links
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. – The Virginia softball team (23-30, 5-14 ACC) received the No. 8 seed in the 2011 Atlantic Coast Conference Championship, which runs Friday through Sunday in Atlanta, Ga. The Cavaliers will face top-seeded Georgia Tech at 5 p.m. Friday in the third game of the day. The conference will live stream the game online at theACC.com and live statistics will also be available and linked to VirginiaSports.com.
The UVa-GT winner will face the No. 4 Florida State vs. No. 5 Virginia Tech winner at 3:30 p.m. Saturday in the semifinals. The championship game is set for 1 p.m. Sunday and will be televised live on the conference’s regional sports networks.
Virginia claimed its only ACC championship in 1994 and fourth-year head coach Eileen Schmidt was a member of that team. The Cavaliers have also been the runner-up in the tournament six times, with the last coming in 2003.
UVa was one of four ACC schools to play in the inaugural league tournament in 1992, along with Florida State, Georgia Tech and North Carolina. Since then, the Cavaliers have compiled an all-time ACC Championship record of 27-35.
The last time Virginia faced Georgia Tech in the ACC Championship was at the 2009 event, hosted by NC State in Raleigh, N.C. The No. 1 Yellow Jackets defeated No. 8 UVa 7-0 in the first round and went on to win the conference tournament title. Virginia is 8-7 all-time against Georgia Tech in the ACC Championship.
The Cavaliers have been idle for final exams for the past week. Virginia was last in action May 3 at Liberty in a make-up doubleheader, which the two teams split.
Freshman Stephanie Harris leads Virginia at the plate this season with a .322 average and hit .347 against conference opponents. She also has a team-best 28 RBI on the season. Junior Giannina Cipolloni is second with a .302 average and is second in the conference with 32 stolen bases on the year. Freshman Marcy Bowdren also contributes a .282 average with a squad-best 13 doubles and five home runs, and is second behind Harris with 27 RBI.
Georgia Tech (44-9, 18-2 ACC) is coming off a series victory at home last weekend against Florida State, two games to one. The Yellow Jackets won the first two games 11-3 and 7-2 before the Seminoles claimed the final contest, 9-4.
Kelsi Weseman leads the conference with a .445 average to pace the Georgia Tech offense. She also boasts 21 home runs and 64 RBI. Teammate Christy Jones hits .342 with 33 stolen bases and Kristine Priebe adds a .341 average with 13 home runs and 47 RBI.
Kristen Adkins leads the Yellow Jackets in the circle with a 1.49 ERA and is 20-5 on the year. She has 133 strikeouts in 155 1/3 innings of work.
Georgia Tech is the lone ACC team ranked and comes in at No. 16 in the latest national poll.
Virginia has a slight edge over the Yellow Jackets in the all-time series, 33-31. Georgia Tech claimed both games in a rain-shortened earlier this season in Charlottesville.