The 2011 ACC Baseball Championship gets underway in Durham today. And for the fourth time in six years of post-expansion ACC baseball, the Eagles are home for the conference's year-end tournament. Good thing the ACC moved that tournament from Fenway to Durham.
My question today is are the Eagles the worst baseball program in the ACC? Other than the dream 2009 season, it's been a fairly forgettable stretch of college baseball for the Eagles in the conference. But BC certainly can't be the worst program, right?
Turns out the Eagles are far from the worst program in the ACC over the last six years. That distinction likely should be given to the Maryland Terrapins, who over the last six years, have amassed a whopping 44-161 record in ACC play (0.215). Duke turns in the second-worst performance, posting a 54-146-1 (ties in baseball?) record over the last six seasons. Virginia Tech has gone 56-134 (.295), while the Eagles rank ninth best in the ACC in terms of winning percentage (64-128), winning a third of games played.
If you want to use ACC Baseball Championship appearances as a measure of suckitude, it's still Maryland. The Terps are the only ACC program to fail to qualify for the ACC Baseball Championship in each of the last six seasons. That's actually a pretty difficult feat to achieve considering the Terps play in the weaker of the conference's two divisions for baseball.
Virginia Tech and Duke have only appeared in one ACC Baseball Championship over the last six years. BC actually has two appearances under its program's belt -- both in 2009 and 2010. Wake Forest has missed the Championship just two years, while N.C. State and North Carolina failed to qualify once. Virginia, Georgia Tech, Florida State, Clemson and Miami are the five ACC programs to make the Baseball Championship field in every year since 2006.
Long story short, it looks like while BC hasn't had the best six year run in college baseball, the honor of worst program in the ACC over the last six seasons probably resides in College Park. But I suppose that's OK, and any Terps fan would tell you they have more important non-revenue sports to worry about come spring. Hey, look over here ... championship-calibre men's and women's lacrosse! A-C-C! A-C-C!