The tourney schedule is set.
The Wolfpack locked up the three-seed in the ACC tournament with its win over Wake Forest on Saturday, putting State in a pool with No. 7 Duke and No. 10 Virginia Tech. NC State will open with the Hokies at 7 p.m. on Wednesday night.
The complete tournament schedule was released Sunday afternoon. The ACC Network will televise every game from Tuesday through Saturday, and ESPN2 will have the title game Sunday.
As the top seed in its pool, NC State is the only team that can lose a game and advance: if all three teams finish at 1-1, the top seed gets the nod. So what happens in the Tuesday night game between the Hokies and Blue Devils will dictate how State approaches the next two nights, because the loser of VT-Duke is eliminated.
It’s nice to have the flexibility from a pitching standpoint, as I’m assuming Elliott Avent will start Sam Highfill in whichever game ends up mattering. In the other game, he can toss out the back end of his bullpen for the evening without being concerned about the outcome—that’d be the prudent move, at least. That’s the advantage to being the pool’s top seed and only needing the one win.