Gameday Info

Match-Up: Boston College at No. 3 Tennessee
Ballpark: Lindsey Nelson Stadium • Knoxville, Tenn.
Stream: SECN+
Live Stats: Sidearm

Pitching Match-Up
RHP-Henry Leake (1-1, 4.22) vs. LHP-Zander Sechrist (0-0, 0.00)

The college baseball world is built on a foundation of conferences with strong roots in the game. Dozens of leagues throughout Division I have dozens of teams capable of farming their home regions for hardball talent, and decades have seen those programs emerge as competitors to the well-known power programs dotting the more recognizable landscape. They are, in effect, a celebration of the game because their rosters copy the genetic code of the way their home regions play.

Each one of those leagues has at least one team capable of taking a shot at a big dog. Teams from California have won national championships alongside mid-major programs from the Louisiana delta, and a team like Wichita State, Rice and Coastal Carolina have, on more than one occasion, downed the mighty teams from the Southeast and Florida.

College baseball is massive, but on Tuesday night, all talk about baseball-strong leagues goes away when two teams from the two most powerful power conferences in America meet for a single mid-week matchup when Boston College makes its first visit to Rocky Top and second-ranked Tennessee.

"When I got our ACC schedule, I knew we'd be on the back end of our spring break trip," said head coach Mike Gambino during the preseason. "We always open up [conference play] on the back end, so I try to build the rest of that trip to have one flight instead of two flights, so when I saw the Kennesaw State series come up, I contacted [Tennessee head coach] Tony [Vitello], and we found that we could make this happen on that Tuesday."

The matchup prevented the Eagles from criss-crossing the Southeast in search of matchups between Kennesaw State and the conference season opener against Virginia Tech, but it additionally slotted a midweek game with major national implications for the two preeminent Division I baseball conferences and their ongoing Hatfield-McCoy rivalry throughout the sport.

Few leagues command the respect of the ACC and SEC, but their collective matchups against one another are often laced with a dripping competitive rivalry to prove one league's superiority. Cross-conference rivalries run deep throughout the South, but BC wedged its way into the conversation after its unspeakable comeback to defeat Auburn twice during a three-game weekend series in March, 2021.

Each team earned a blowout victory to start that series, but an eight-run rally in the ninth erased the Tigers' 9-1 lead before Luke Gold's two-run homer in the 10th left the Plainsman Park crowd in a stunned silence. Both teams were ranked in the top-25 at the time, and after improving to 8-2 on the season, the Eagles burst into the top-16 for the first time since the 2016 team advanced to the Super Regionals of the NCAA Tournament.

To be fair, attendance wilted and crumbled around the nation because of the numerous restrictions enacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Auburn games featured crowds numbering less than 1,000 at a stadium where 3,750-plus fans watched the season opener in 2020. From that respect, the atmosphere on Tuesday night is going to be very different, and the opponent is arguably more elite than any other team in the country.

The two losses from the first two games of the MLB Desert Invitational are a distant memory already, and the Volunteers positively ripped their way through their next 11 games by destroying their next four opponents. They had two run-rule victories over Alabama A&M by a combined 33-1 score, and until last weekend's 17-9 win over Gonzaga, they hadn't allowed more than two runs since the losses to Arizona and Grand Canyon. They had smoked Charleston Southern, and the three wins over the Bulldogs were by a combined 23-6.

"We want to see what happens when we play a team that's a potential Omaha team and a top-10 team," Gambino said. "We play against those teams all the time, but for the ACC as a conference, if we can get that win, if we can go into Tennessee and get one, it's a great win for us from an RPI standpoint and a good win for our league that can be shared around the league. We all compete within the ACC, and we all want to beat each other, but when the end of the year comes, we all want as many of us in the tournament as possible."

It shapes a unique matchup for Tuesday night because it's a huge matchup for both clubs, but it's also a midweek game where weekend starters likely won't see innings on the bump. A rain delay pushed Friday's matchup into a forced doubleheader on Saturday, and with Chris Flynn starting the second game, John West was used as an opener before Henry Leake pitched 2.2 innings of work. Both Bobby Chicoine and Eric Schroeder worked deep into Sunday's finale.

Midweek games in general usually utilize pitching depth on both sides, but the limited use allows BC to slot Leake into a game at Tennessee against a starter that isn't one of the midweek firearms. But even if the Eagles don't see top MLB prospect Chase Dollander or Drew Beam's 1.76 ERA, Zander Sechrist is a more than capable starter who hasn't allowed a run in just under seven innings of work. His 4.1 innings of shutout ball against Charleston Southern featured five strikeouts and no walks with three hits surrendered, and the junior is coming off of a season in which he allowed 27 hits with 46 strikeouts across 43 innings - with seven walks.

That outing came before 4,115 fans at Lindsey Nelson Stadium, and with an ACC team fresh off its eighth consecutive victory arriving for a Tuesday night jaunt, it's likely going to come in front of another lively atmosphere. Like games in the ACC - and especially in the key games dotting BC's season this year - this is the type of atmosphere for which the Eagles need to prepare and be ready before turning to a Wednesday matchup at UNC Asheville and its head coach, former BC assistant Scott Friedholm.

"It'll be a fun place to play," Gambino emphasized, "and the ACC has places where we see great [attendance]. The SEC has places with that same type of atmosphere, and we've played in some of them. We've played at Ole Miss. We've played at LSU. So getting into another ACC-SEC atmosphere, going into the season, helps our team get used to it."

BC and No. 3 Tennessee are slated for a 6:30 p.m. ET first pitch from Lindsey Nelson Stadium in Knoxville, Tennessee. The game can be seen on the SEC Network+, which is the streaming component of the SEC Network that's available on the ESPN online and mobile platform of Internet and mobile device apps.

Showdown At Rocky Top

Gameday Info

Next Event

Players Mentioned

Bobby Chicoine

Chris Flynn

Luke Gold

Henry Leake

Eric Schroeder

John West

Showdown At Rocky Top

Gameday Info

Next Event

Players Mentioned

Bobby Chicoine

Chris Flynn

Luke Gold

Henry Leake

Eric Schroeder

John West

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