Headlines: Baseball's ACC Tournament Magic Number is 2

Brian: The baseball team salvaged a win on Sunday to avoid the sweep by Miami (FL), blasting the Canes 13-3. The rest of the weekend did not break the Eagles way. On Friday, the Eagles fell 5-1 and they also lost in Brockton on Saturday 7-5. The one win weekend gets the Eagles to 29-19-0 (12-13-0 ACC) and keeps BC in the 8th ACC Tournament playoff spot.

Luckily for BC, the Hokies (27-19-0, 10-15-0) - currently in 9th place - were unable to make up any ground on the Eagles over the weekend as they were swept by Florida State in Tallahassee. If the season ended today, the seedings for the ACC Tournament would look like this:

1. Florida State (17-7-0) - Atlantic Division champ
2. North Carolina (16-7-0) - Coastal Division champ
3. Georgia Tech (14-7-1)
4. Virginia (13-8-1)
5. Clemson (15-10-0)
6. Miami (FL) (15-12-0)
7. Duke (12-12-0)
8. Boston College (12-13-0)

Virginia Tech is still alive at 10-15-0. NC State (8-16-0), Wake Forest (6-18-0) and Maryland (6-19-0) have been eliminated from ACC Tournament consideration.

One weekend of ACC play left for Boston College and Virginia Tech. The two clubs have this weekend off from ACC play and finish the regular season with the Eagles hosting North Carolina and the Hokies hosting Virginia. BC's magic number is 2. Any combination of 2 Eagle wins or Hokie losses gets the Eagles into the ACC Tournament for the first time in school history.

So on Saturday, May 16, will we be able to say the Eagles are headed to Durham to play in their first ACC Tournament, or are we looking at another monumental, BC-esque collapse in the final ACC weekend?

Jeff: The Eagles have had a very good baseball season regardless of what happens next weekend, but it is disappointing that they are going to most likely be looking for help from Virginia to knock off the Hokies twice in order for them to make the conference tournament. The Eagles might be able to get one win in the series with North Carolina but that would still leave them needing a little help. Fortunately, the Cavaliers are a strong team so the Hokies sweeping is highly unlikely and are probably even likely to go 1-2 eliminating themselves from the postseason. One way or the other, I think the Eagles will be in the ACC tournament after next weekend, but it would've been nice if they were playing for seeding and not for their ACC tournament lives in the final ACC weekend.

Brian: In the event that the Eagles don't reach that magic number of 2 in the final ACC regular season weekend, there is a possibility BC and Virginia Tech could tie for the last playoff spot with a 12-16-0 or a 13-15-0 record. Here is the ACC Tournament seeding tiebreaker procedure. Since BC and Virginia Tech didn't face each other in the regular season, the first tiebreaker is record against common opponents. That would be a dead heat as well.

You'd get all the way down to ACC tiebreaker #5 which states:

"Head-to-head competition of the tied teams versus common opponents in the opposite division with the best overall conference winning percentage (divisional and non-divisional) and proceeding through the opposite division"

In this case, I think the Eagles would win this tiebreaker as the Eagles would have gone 3-3 or 2-4 against the top two ACC teams (2-1 vs. Florida State and 1-2 or 0-3 vs. North Carolina) while the Hokies will have gone 0-5 vs. Florida State and UNC.

Let's just hope it doesn't come to this and the Eagles end up safely in the 8 team field for this year's ACC Tournament.