Pitt baseball sweeps ranked Georgia Tech over weekend

Over the weekend, Pitt's baseball team put together a sweep of the No. 23 ranked Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets. The encouraging thing? They did it with pitching.

The Panthers opened up the series on Friday with a 4-3 win in extra innings over the Yellow Jackets after a walkoff double by Steven Shelinsky. Starter Rhys Aldenhoven was decent, giving up three runs over 5 1/3, but the bullpen stole the show. Hobie Harris and Jon Danielczyk, pitching 7 2/3 innings of scoreless ball to secure the win.

In Game 2, Pitt's latest pitching star, Joe Harvey, threw a gem in a 5-0 win. Harvey allowed only three hits while going a career-high eight innings and as I recently wrote, he's fit nicely into the rotation. You can actually make a pretty good case that he has been the Panthers' best starter this season. He leads the three starters in ERA (2.91) and ERA in conference games (2.22), and leads the group in walks allowed per nine innings while striking out batters at about the same rate.

Sunday's finale saw Matt Wotherspoon get back on track with a really strong performance in a 4-2 win. Wotherspoon (who has struggled a little as I said a few weeks ago) went seven strong innings with four strikeouts giving up only two runs. Head coach Joe Jordano commented on his strong game afterwards and also discussed the series:

"I was really pleased with Matt (Wotherspoon) on the mound today," Head Coach Joe Jordano said. "He needed that. We needed that. He did a very solid job. He commanded his pitches well. He gave us an opportunity, just as Joe (Harvey) and Rhys (Aldenhoven) did the two previous days. We beat a very, very good baseball team with a great tradition that is well coached. I thought our guys came in and played our game. We played clean baseball. We pitched well. We played hard and we took advantage of some offensive opportunities."

Pitt now sits at 15-11 on the season and the sweep pushed them over .500 in the conference (7-5). More on this tomorrow, but the baseball team is on a roll right now.

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