Pitt baseball faces important series against Georgia Tech

The Pitt baseball team had been on a roll, having won five of their past six games before dropping two mid-week contests this week. The Panthers have an intriguing challenge this weekend against Georgia Tech. Weather permitting, Pitt will play the Yellow Jackets Friday, Saturday, and Sunday at home, and games will be broadcast on the ACC Network (WatchESPN).

As I wrote earlier, the Panthers are making progress in the ACC. They are legitimately in the middle of the pack of the conference and will face a Georgia Tech team that has a similar record. Heading into this week, the Yellow Jackets were 19-13 and 8-7 (ACC) as opposed to the Panthers’ 17-11 and 6-9 conference mark. They sit just ahead of the Panthers in the conference standings in third place.

Similarly, Georgia Tech is also on a roll. Heading into this week, they’ve won seven of their last eight games, including both of their last ACC series’ against Miami and Florida State. The Yellow Jackets are mostly doing it with pitching. Save for a 10-run outburst scored against them by the Seminoles in one game, they’ve allowed a total of 15 runs in their other seven games in that stretch.

It will be an interesting matchup as the Panthers’ offense has been on fire lately. Prior to being shutout on Sunday, the team had scored 61 runs in their previous nine games, averaging nearly seven per contest. The bats cooled off in this week’s mid-week games but before that, had been pretty good.

The series will serve as a good benchmark for where Pitt truly stands. Georgia Tech is a solid team and while Pitt is inching closer to looking like one this year, the jury is still out a little. While the Panthers have won their last two series’, they’ve done so against Virginia and Boston College, two of the weaker ACC programs this year. Nearly winning a series against a ranked Duke team has me thinking Pitt is indeed a pretty good team this season. But winning series’ like this one would provide a little more evidence.

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