UNC baseball’s Brandon Schaeffer has incredible ACCT showing

UNC baseball pitcher Brandon Schaeffer put on a sensational performance in the ACC Tournament against top-seeded Virginia Tech.

North Carolina’s Brandon Schaeffer had a career performance on Friday night when the No. 8 seed North Carolina Tar Heels beat the top-seeded Virginia Tech Hokies by a final score of 10-0 in the ACC Tournament.

Virginia Tech, 41-12, entered the game with a No. 2 national ranking and high hopes of winning their conference tournament prior to the start of NCAA Tournament play. Instead, the Hokies were dominated by Schaeffer to the tune of nine innings pitched, six hits surrendered, six strikeouts, zero walks, and 73 strikes to just 29 balls.

"“That’s about as impressive of a pitching performance, and I’ve seen a lot of impressive ones at UNC,” North Carolina head coach Scott Forbes said following the shutout. “I was just joking with them (Schaeffer and Vance Honeycutt) on the way up on the elevator, that’s what he did to us the whole preseason and he just did that to one of the better teams in the country. Story of the game is Brandon Schaeffer.”"

Schaeffer’s line is even more impressive when considering that the Hokies began the game with top 25 rankings in batting average, slugging percentage, home runs, scoring, and on-base percentage. He’s the first UNC pitcher to throw a nine-inning shutout since Kent Emmanuel blanked the Texas Longhorns in the 2011 College World Series.

This is the second time that Schaeffer has shut the Hokies down in crunch time over the past two months. He came into the ninth inning of a game in early April when the Tar Heels needed a pair of outs to secure a victory that helped them avoid being swept.

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