Bubble trouble for Notre Dame baseball after Irish ousted in ACC Tourney

Suddenly bubble is an ugly word for the Notre Dame baseball team.

Scrapping, clawing, willing their way to reach the brink of an NCAA Tournament berth with a 16-win surge in a 19-game span after a mid-April heartbreaking series with Boston College, the Irish may have fallen through a trapdoor in the wee hours of Wednesday morning.

Courtesy of more heartache from BC.

Freshman Gavin Soares pitched 4 ⅔ innings of one-hit relief and Patrick Roche broke a 4-4 tie with a run-scoring single as the 14th-seeded Eagles ousted 11th seed Notre Dame, 5-4 in 10 innings, in the first round of the ACC Tournament in Durham. N.C.

All three of the lowest-seeded teams in the 16-team, single-elimination tourney pulled off upsets Tuesday night/Wednesday morning, with 16th-seeded Cal crushing 9 seed Miami in 8 innings, 12-2, and 15th-seeded Pitt edging 10 seed Louisville, 13-11, in an elongated game that pushed the start of the ND-BC game back almost an hour and a half, to 10:25 EDT.

Boston College (27-28) advances to play 6 seed Virginia (32-17), another bubble team from the ACC, on Wednesday night at 9 EDT at Durham Bulls Athletic Park. The Irish (32-21) get to sweat out the lull until Selection Monday for the 64-team NCAA Tournament.

“Certainly, I think we’ve done enough,” Irish head coach Shawn Stiffler said of ND’s potential inclusion in the field of 64. “But we didn’t execute great tonight. We had opportunities.”

Notre Dame led after the first inning, 2-0, on an RBI double from freshman first baseman Parker Brzustewicz and a sacrifice fly from second baseman Connor Hincks.

But a two-out rally in the top of the second had the Irish playing catch-up most of the night. A walk, followed by a single on an 0-2 pitch brought BC’s No. 8 hitter, Kyle Wolff, to the plate. And on a full count, Eagles DH blasted a Rory Fox pitch well over the left-field wall for a 3-2 BC lead.

The Eagles made it 4-2 on a safety squeeze in the top of the third before Fox found his groove on the mound.

He ended up lasting six innings, making a nifty double play with a behind-the-back scoop of a ground ball, and throwing 105 pitches before giving way to reliever Ricky Reeth to start the seventh.

“[Fox] threw the ball terrific tonight and pitched out of several jams,” Stiffler said. “But it’s just that one blip on the screen, two outs and nobody on. I’ll watch that inning a long time in my life. I’ll replay that inning.”

Stiffler opted against starting ace sophomore Jack Radel, who beat Miami Thursday night in the opener of that series.

“We had to ride Jack so hard the last three or four weeks just to get us here, I didn’t feel comfortable bringing him back on five days’ rest,” he said. “I just wasn’t going to do that to a sophomore arm.

“Jack Radel wanted the ball really, really bad, and he will probably stare a hole in the back of my head on the plane. But my job is to get these guys — I have to think about the next 40 years for them, not necessarily the next four days. As bad as I wanted that game, I love Jack a lot more.”

As ND rallied, it appeared Radel would be set to start Wednesday night against Virginia.

Shortstop Estevan Moreno’s 10th home run leading off the bottom of the fourth cut the deficit to one run. The Irish tied it at 4-4 two innings later on a one-out, bases-loaded walk to No. 9 hitter Brady Gumpf.

That’s when Soares entered the game, and he struck out DM Jefferson and Carson Tinney to end the threat.

BC had a threat of its own going in the top of the seventh against the Irish with runners at the corners with one out. Reeth struck out Roche, but then uncorked a wild pitch to junior Jack Toomey.

Wolff tried to score from third but Tinney tagged him out at the plate in a play that ended with a collision and the Irish star catcher slowly gathering himself before returning to play in the eighth.

“He seemed to be fine,” Stiffler said. “No one messes around with head injuries, like that’s the No. 1 thing. If a trainer feels you’re shaky at all, he’s going to get you.

“I think it was more about the collision, and Carson just kind of gathering himself. I think he knew there was impact. He wasn’t 100 percent sure where the impact totally was, but there was something around his head.

“So, we wanted to make sure and he bounced right back in there and played well. Worked a walk and threw a runner out.”

In fact, Tinney was at first when DH Davis Johnson hit a deep fly ball in the bottom of the inning that was caught at the right-field wall for a loud out.

After BC untied the game in the top of the 10th off ND closer Tobey McDonough, the Irish got a two-out single from left fielder Jared Zimbardo — his third hit of the game — before third baseman Nick DeMarco grounded to third to end the game.

For the eighth straight game, standout freshman outfielder/DH Bino Watters was reduced to a spectator with an injury he suffered in a May 3 win over Louisville.

“Bino’s got a lower-leg injury that’s basically a tolerance piece,” Stiffler said. “You have to be careful, because if you don’t let it completely go away, it can just keep flaring up. And so, he put his spikes on at the end and wanted to pinch-hit and stuff, but he hasn’t seen live [pitching]. He hasn’t done that stuff.

“And you’re just setting young people up to fail on emotion there. But Beano, I’m really, really hoping if they give us an opportunity — I think that they should. I think we check a lot of boxes — I hope he’s at least available to DH or pinch-hit.”

BOSTON COLLEGE 5, NOTRE DAME 4 (10 innings): Box Score

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