Cal Baseball: Golden Bears Eliminated as Georgia Tech Advances to ACC Baseball Championship Semifinals
Cal's 2025 season and postseason run has come to an end as the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets tied the ACC Championship record with seven home runs to win 10-3 over the Golden Bears on Thursday morning.
What felt like an unstoppable force for a couple of games in this ACC Baseball championship met a truly immovable object. The California Golden Bears, who finished the regular season 22-30, were last in the ACC with a record of 9-21, were the lowest seed (No. 16) in the single-elimination ACC Baseball Championship, and had already upset two 6:00 AM PST matchups against No. 9 Miami and No. 8 Wake Forest to face off against the regular season conference champions and No. 1 seed Georgia Tech in the quarterfinals of the tournament- have concluded their 2025 season after losing to the Yellow Jackets 10-3 in Durham, North Carolina.
Georgia Tech secured the quarterfinal spot via a double-bye in the new ACC tournament format after securing the No. 1 seed in the conference with a record of 19-11, and are currently ranked No. 16 in the nation (NCAA D1Baseball), which would secure them as hosts of a NCAA DI Baseball Regonional Tournament (the first round of the 2025 NCAA Division I baseball tournament). Cal, on the other hand, was relying on a spark of offensive momentum, energy from a Grogu stuffed toy, and “swag juice” in their surprise postseason run.
Danny Hall went to Sophomore Tate McKee to get the start for the Yellow Jacket, and he was able to get the top of the Bears’ batting order to all ground out in the top of the 1st to get the game started. Mike Neu gave the start to Sophomore JJ Hollis, who did not make it out of the bottom of the 1st inning after giving up a leadoff home run to Drew Burress, a two-run home run to Kyle Lodise, and a solo home run to Caleb Daniel, prompting Mike Neu to make an interesting bullpen decision to bring in David Shaw, after he had thrown 81 pitches the morning prior, to get the Bears out of the inning down 0-4.
Jacob French was able to lead the Bears off with a base hit in the top of the 2nd. Still, Schmidtt, Handron, and Campbell could not get anything going against McKee beyond that, as the Yellow Jackets came to bat against Cal’s Cole Tremain, who gave Cal a legitimate shot at staying in this game and tournament, with 5.0 innings of clutch relief pitching with only one hit, one walk, three HBP, four strikeouts, and no runs allowed.
Cal was able to get a run on the board in the top of the 5th with a leadoff single by Alex Birge, who would score on a groundout to shortstop by PJ Moutzouridis before the Bears would leave the bases loaded after Advincula, Smaldino, and French reached base, as Schmidt struck out swinging on a 1-2 slider that moved 1-1.5 feet away from the plate.
The Bears were able to shrink the Georgia Tech lead to two runs in the top of the 7th with another leadoff single, this time by Jarren Advincula, who was brought in on an RBI single to right by Smaldino to make it 4-2 Yellow Jackets before the bottom half of the inning where the Cal coaching staff decided to bring in Jordy Lopez, who threw 41 pitches against Wake Forest the day prior. Lopez hit a leadoff home run to Drew Rogers to give GT a 5-3 lead and their fourth home run of the game.
The Yellow Jackets then led off the bottom of the 8th with a home run from Alex Hernandez to knock Lopez out of the game for Cal and bring in Tucker Bougie, who gave up a home run to his first batter, Vahn Lackey, to make it 7-2. Lackey would be Bougie’s only batter he faced, as Logan Piper came in to relieve him after getting the two-pitch-save in Wednesday’s win over Wake Forest, but Piper allowed Caleb Daniel and Carson Kerce to reach base for Drew Burress to come to the plate with two outs, and Burress hit his second home run of the game, this time a three-run home run on a 3-0 pitch that went over the left field “bull” out of the ballpark. Cal pitchers allowed an ACC Baseball Championship record-tying seven home runs to the Yellow Jackets to make it 10-2 Georgia Tech, with a Carl Schmidt RBI-single in the top of the 9th giving the Bears one more run before being sent home from the tournament with nothing left in the 2025 season.
Cal was only able to produce three runs on 12 hits in 39 ABs, while only getting two walks the entire game and stranding 12 runners on base. The Bears had their leadoff batter reach base in 8/9 times, while Georgia Tech was able to get 10 runs on 10 hits, while only walking twice and stranding only four runners on base.
The Yellow Jackets move on to play against the No. 5 seed Clemson (No. 14 in the nation according to NCAA D1Baseball) in the semifinals of the ACC Baseball Championship tournament, while the California Golden Bears’ 2025 season has officially come to an end. Regular season and playoffs combined, Cal finishes 24-31 with a conference record of 9-21 in their first season in the ACC, and for many Golden Bears, this was their final game in Berkeley Blue and California Gold.
While the 2025 baseball season in Berkeley has concluded, coverage will only continue at Write For California as Cal has a lot to navigate this summer with an all-California-based incoming class, as well as uncertainty surrounding NIL, the transfer portal, and the stability of Cal as a program in the ACC, when next season’s rotated opponents can consist of even more nationally ranked opponets like North Carolina.
Final thought: Thank you for following along in my first season covering Cal Baseball. As long as I get to keep doing this, I will. Enjoy your summer, and Go Bears forever.
- Justin
Tremain was fantastic in the GT game.
Great stuff!
Really hoping baseball will survive the portal. Got to think Advincula will be a hot commodity.
Also, pitching recruiting has been rough the last 3 years. Neu just can't seem to recruit enough strong pitching. Now in the ACC the hitting level truly has been raised in the competition