BC holds own against juggernaut

This may have been the second ACC series of the year at Shea Field, but this was different. This was Florida State, the No. 3 team in the nation.

This was the series that truly brought ACC baseball, with its eight top-25 teams, to Chestnut Hill.

Nobody truly expected the Eagles to beat these Seminoles, although they did make FSU head coach Mike Martin sweat a bit over the final two games. After all, the 'Noles boast the reigning National Collegiate Player of the Year in Shane Robinson, who had a 40-game hitting streak last season.

BC head coach Peter Hughes says that his team did not prepare for FSU any differently than they would any other opponent, nor were they nervous about playing a team of FSU's caliber.

It might have been a good idea for the Eagles to alter their game-plan, however, because their execution in situations where they normally thrive was poor. The Eagles are a small-ball team, ranking first in the league in steals and second in sacrifice bunts. This series was filled with numerous mistakes, however, with most notably bunting but also on the basepaths.

The most critical miscue came in the weekend's most important at-bat, as shortstop Joseph Ayers was asked to lay down a suicide squeeze bunt with the bases loaded and one out in the seventh inning of Saturday's game, with the Eagles trailing 3-2.

Ayers, the team's leader in sacrifices, was unable to keep the bunt down, leading to FSU catcher Danny Diaz making a phenomenal catch and doubling up Shawn McGill to end the inning.

There were also numerous base-running errors committed by the Eagles, including a sequence on Friday that saw the Eagles commit back-to-back outs on the bases - Johnny Ayers was thrown out at third after a single by Ryan Hutchinson, who promptly got picked off first.

It was a good thing former Red Sox manager Joe Morgan, BC '52, who threw the ceremonial first pitch, had already left or he might have thrown up at this display of baserunning.

BC's inability to do the little things could be attributed to a desire to do too much against FSU, with the Eagles' players so desperate to make something happen that they instead played outside their capabilities.

Although Hughes asserted that his players approached this series the same as any other, that certainly did not show up in their performance.

With No. 7 Clemson coming to town in two weeks and No. 9 Georgia Tech the week after, Superfans had better hope that the Eagles learn how to play against these elite teams, for the ACC has many more to offer.