Cal Baseball: California Stuns Miami 12-2 in ACC Championship Opener
The #16 seeded Golden Bears send the #9 seeded Hurricanes home via a 10-run mercy rule in Game 1 of the ACC Baseball Championship
The California Golden Bears were up bright and early Tuesday morning in Durham, North Carolina, for game one of a long and scary path to the NCAA Division I Baseball Championship. Cal’s first season in the ACC comes with changes to the format of the ACC Baseball Championship tournament—the postseason bracket that determines the ACC champion and an automatic bid to the NCAA tourney, where all 16 programs in the conference make it to the tournament, but it is a single-elimination format, where the No. 5-8 seeded teams receive an automatic first-round bye and the top four seeded teams get an automatic bye to the quarterfinals.
The Miami Hurricanes entered the tournament as the #9 seed after going 15-14 in ACC conference play and 31-23 overall in the regular season, which included losing five of their last six games against ACC foes like Notre Dame and Virginia.
Cal is coming off their second conference series win of the season and enters the tournament as the lowest and #16 seed after a disappointing inaugural season in the ACC, where they only swept one team (Stanford) and won one other series to close out the season against Boston College. Cal finished the regular season with a conference record of 9-21 and went 23-30 overall while losing 18 games at home.
Canes pitcher Griffin Hugus got the start for Miami, while Oliver de la Torre earned the opening start for the Golden Bears, with both pitchers working through the 1st inning without allowing any runs to score. Cal got on the board first in the top of the 2nd, as Cade Campbell singled with two outs to have a runner on base for Alex Birge to hit a two-run home run to right field to give the Bears an early 2-0 lead.
The Bears would send Hugus out of the game after he walked Handron and Campbell back-to-back to lead off the top of the 4th, which would bring in reliever Carson Fischer, who would walk Alex Birge after working a 3-2 count, allowing Ethan Kodama to single to left field for an RBI to make it 3-0. Advincula then reached on an error by Ogden at shortstop that would score Campbell, and the Bears took a 4-0 lead. Fischer was then swapped out for Will Smith, who surrendered a two-RBI double down the left field line to his first batter, PJ Moutzouridis, to make it a 6-0 lead for the Golden Bears. Smith then walked Dominic Smaldino, ending his morning on the mound and bringing Alex Giroux in to pitch for the Miami Hurricanes. Giroux hit Jacob French with a 2-2 fastball to bring Advincula home, and Carl Schmidt followed with a two-RBI single up the middle to make it a seven-run inning, and a 9-0 ballgame for the Golden Bears over Miami.
Oliver de la Torre was outstanding in his ACC postseason debut for the Golden Bears, pitching 6.0 innings and only allowing two hits in that span. He walked zero batters while striking out seven, keeping his pitch count to 85 as his dominance and recent success will absolutely be crucial to the Bears’ struggling pitching staff if Cal is to try and make a legitimate run in this tournament.
Cal added another run to make it a 10-run game as Moutzouridis singled and stole second with two outs in the top of the 7th, and Smaldino singled through the middle to bring PJ home and make it a 10-0 ballgame. The Golden Bears were three outs away from sending Miami home early via mercy rule in the ACC Championship tournament.
Mike Neu brought Ethan Foley in to relieve de la Torre in the bottom of the 7th and try and send Miami home early, but Foley quickly lost the Bears’ 10-run lead by surrendering a one-out two-run home run to Tanner Smith before striking out Taveras and Gonzales. Luckily, the Cal offense did not want to play a 9-inning game anyway, and Alex Birge jumped on Canes reliever Jackson Cleveland for his second two-run home run of the game to get the 10-run lead and mercy rule in play back for the Golden Bears.
Foley struck out Kulikowski before allowing Torres to reach via a base hit to center, but he got Ogden to ground into a fielder’s choice, and Max Galvin to pop-up to Campbell at third base to end the game in an 8-inning 10-run mercy rule, with the bottom-seed California Golden Bears upsetting the #9 seeded Miami Hurricanes in Durham.
Cal will move on to play against #8 seeded Wake Forest in Game 5 of the ACC Baseball Championship Tournament, with the first pitch slated for a 9:00 AM EST start time- another 6:00 AM west coast game! The game will be available to watch/stream on ESPN+ with an ACC Network subscription.
Any Cal team that beats any Miami team is A-Okay in my book. Go Bears!
The perfect year to upset Miami (in any sport)!