In what we hope to be a new weekly feature for The Wolfpacker, we will recap each week with a 3-2-1 column of observations and thoughts from the week that was and is ahead for NC State athletics.
Three Pack Sports With Big Weekends Ahead
1. Women’s tennis goes for history. Wrestling coach Pat Popolizio and swimming coach Braden Holloway earn a lot of plaudits for their remarkable turnarounds of two programs that are now nationally relevant at the highest levels. Women’s cross country coach Laurie Henes has her program on the verge of a potential national title.
Perhaps flying under the radar a bit has been women’s tennis coach Simon Earnshaw. The year before Earnshaw arrived in 2015, NC State was 8-14 overall and 2-12 in the ACC. The Wolfpack had not had a winning record in the conference since 1998.
By 2016, Earnshaw had improved NC State to 6-8 in the league. It then went 7-7 the next two years before breaking through with an 11-3 campaign in 2019, when it reached the Sweet 16 for the first time in Pack history. Last year, Earnshew's team was 18-3 overall and 5-1 in the ACC when the year was canceled.
This year, NC State is 18-5, including going 10-3 in the league. It is back into the Sweet 16, and Sunday represents a great opportunity to get into the quarterfinals for the first time ever. The sixth-ranked Pack will compete against No. 35 Southern Cal in Lake Nona, Fla.
The winner of that match will face the victor between Georgia and Virginia. NC State defeated No. 13 UVa on April 11, 4-3.
2. Men’s golf prepares for NCAA action. The Pack is the No. 2 seed in the 13-team Kingston Springs Regional on May 17-19, and NC State will aim to be one of the top five finishers to advance to the NCAA Championships.
The track record this season would suggest that the Pack should be considered a strong favorite to accomplish that. In eight tournaments, all featuring at least 12 teams, NC State never finished worse than fifth, winning four of them. That tied for the fourth most team wins in a single season in program history.
NC State has only advanced to the NCAA Championships twice in since 2006 — 2011 and 2018. The Pack’s best finish there is eighth, done in 1982 and 1995.
1. Baseball can go a long way to securing a NCAA Championship at-large berth. Based on how the mock fields look going into the weekend, NC State is safely in the NCAA Tournament at the moment, but this weekend represents the first of two golden opportunities to go a long way to erasing any doubt.
Pittsburgh has been a bit of a surprise in the ACC, and at the moment it is positioned to host a regional. Then NC State will host streaky but dangerous Florida State, another team that is probably safely in the field. The Noles are a hot team, having won its last three ACC series, including at Georgia Tech and at ACC-leading Notre Dame.
Conventional wisdom would suggest that if NC State wins at least one of the two series and avoids a sweep in the other, it has nothing to worry in terms of at large prospects entering the ACC Tournament.
