Pitt baseball makes the ACC Tournament for the fourth consecutive season

The Panthers clinched a spot in the 12-team conference tournament by defeating Miami 10-7 in Coral Gables on Saturday afternoon. That win improved Pitt’s ACC record to 10-20, moving the Panthers ahead of Notre Dame, who was 9-21 this season and earning them as the No. 12 seed.

As the No. 12 seed, Pitt was placed in Pool A with No. 1 seed North Carolina and No. 8 seed Wake Forest. The teams in the pool will face each other once this week in a round robin; the four teams with the best records will advance to the semifinals on Saturday. The ACC Championship Game will be played on Sunday.

Pitt will face Wake Forest on Wednesday at 3 pm and North Carolina on Thursday at 3 pm. Both games will be televised on ACC Network.

All pool games as well as the semifinals and finals will be held at Truist Field in Charlotte, North Carolina, and the games will begin on Tuesday.

Pitt joined the ACC ahead of the 2014 season but did not qualify for the ACC Tournament until 2018. The year, the Panthers won both pool games to advance to the semifinals, where they lost to Louisville.

Pitt returned to the ACC Tournament in 2021 but did not advance from pool play with a 1-1 record. The Panthers did make the semifinals in 2022 after sweeping their pool games. And last year, they went 1-1 in pool play.

If Pitt intends to advance from pool play in this year’s ACC Tournament, the Panthers face an uphill battle. North Carolina is a top-10 team nationally after posting a 41-22 overall record and a 22-8 mark in the ACC this season, and the Tar Heels swept Pitt during a three-game series in Chapel Hill in March (although that series featured a pair of one-run games, including a 10-inning loss for the Panthers in the Sunday finale).

Pitt did not face Wake Forest this season.

The series against UNC was Pitt’s first ACC matchup of the 2024 season; the Panthers subsequently lost their next seven conference series before rallying to take two out of three at Florida State and two out of three at Miami in the final two series of the season.

This season is Pitt coach Mike Bell’s sixth with the Panthers. Bell has an overall record of 133-145 and an ACC record of 57-96 in that span. Pitt has never posted a winning record in conference play - under Bell or his predecessor, Joe Jordano - and the Panthers have won 10 regular-season ACC games each of the last two seasons.