Prime Time For State-Carolina This Week

The brackets and times of all of the ACC baseball games that begin Wednesday have been announced and during the first four days of the tournament UNC and NCSU will be the head liner in the 7pm prime time game in three of the four days.  You can find all games either on Fox Sports South or ESPN2

State gets prime coverage Wednesday as they as the #4 seed play #5 Clemson.  Friday night Carolina plays under the lights as they will also take on Clemson.  Then hopefully with a chance to play for the ACC championship they both collide Saturday night.

Carolina as ACC regular champs is the number one seed in the tournament and are the head of bracket A.  State seeded fourth and Clemson seeded fifth and Miami as the #8 seed all will play each other the first four days.  Bracket B has #2 Florida State, #3 Virginia,#6 Virginia Tech and #7 Georgia Tech.  the two bracket winners will play each other Sunday for the ACC Championship.

I find it hard to believe that the college world series can have a better set of teams.  Carolina is 2nd in RPI, Virginia 3rd, Florida St 4th, N C State 9th, Clemson 12th, Virginia Tech 15, Miami 21st and Georgia tech 22.  This sounds like what the ACC Basketball use to be.  If the RPI is the magnifying glass of who you have played and how you did I don't understand completely.  Cal State Fullerton is 8th in RPI but 50th in strength while State at 9th in RPI is 10th in strength of schedule. All eight ACC teams playing in ACC Tournament had no worse than 20 in strength of Schedule and that is Florida St.

UNC Wilmington is 26th in the RPI and Campbell 43rd.  That should keep both in the NCAA Regional regardless of the outcome of upcoming conference tournaments. UNCW is 47 in strength of schedule but here is where Campbell will be nervous this week until the 64 teams are announced their strength is only 242.

Post 58 American Legion baseball kicks off Monday night AT HOME.  One of the real challenges of making a schedule is high school playoffs and yes RMA just finishing up yesterday hinders Post 58 but many other Legions have the same problem so games get moved around many times.  So if you have one of the early schedules Monday shows on the road to Cary but it is home Monday night.

Eagles Just Could Not Stop Wildcats

Game two of the the 2-A Independent high school state championship goes to the defending champions West Chester of High Point.  Game two on West Chester's home field saw  the Eagles serve as the home team in game two and West Chester plated a run in the top of the first.  RMA responded with three in the bottom of the first but from then on when ever they needed to hold the Wildcats they couldn't.  Trailing 7-4 heading to the top of the 6th West Chester score seven times in the last two innings to win 14-4 in a game closer than the final score.  Rocky Mount Academy will finished second  in 2-A Private school baseball.  Sunday night on the All New Sports Show on WHIG-TV you can see their win over Faith Christian which was played Tuesday night that got them to this weekend games against West Chester.

This past Thursday night Rocky Mount High School held their Athletic awards banquet honoring all athletes from all 2012-2013 sports.  The Triple Crown award winners  combining athletics, Classroom as well as all areas of life were Lindsey Warner and  Alexis Threatt.  The best male athlete was Mason Hines.  The best female athlete was J'Kyra Brown.  Mason Holt won the Juan Chesson award  honoring former Gryphon Juan Chesson.

Since we are talking about awards I can't go without mentioning my favorite Gryphon baseball player in Dillon Cockrell.  Dillon Graduated from Carolina last weekend and he won the 2013 Dashiell-Thurstone Award for having the best Thesis of all the graduating seniors at UNC.

Dillon did his Thesis on  the F-MRI.  The F-MRI  can detect the brain waves of children with autism.  Dillon's research  was on the different colors of the MRI and what effect those colors have in the brain's performance of Autistic Children.

Dillon was just short of graduating with a 4.0 four year average.  Not bad  for a student who was the supervisor of recreation at UNC and one of the main players for the Carolina Club baseball team.  Graduation day  Dillon had to make one of his first choices of  adult life whether to go to graduation or play in the Club Regional finals.  He chose to go to graduation where he received his award and Carolina lost the Regional without him.

Dillon hopes to go to Medical School but next year he will spend a year working  research at Duke University.   Dillon is proof that you can be a good athlete and still get good grades.  Congratulations Dillon