The Wolfpack are on the edges of the Regional host conversation
The latest D1 Baseball NCAA Field-of-64 projection has NC State as the 2-seed in the Auburn (#11 national seed) regional. Southern Miss (3) and Ball State (4) are the other projected teams there.
D1 also has Clemson (#2 national seed), FSU (#6), and UNC (#9) as regional hosts, with Wake Forest (2-seed), Virginia Tech (2), Louisville (2), Georgia Tech (2), Duke (3), and Miami (3) making the field.
The latest Baseball America NCAA Field-of-64 projection also has NC State as a 2-seed, but in the Nashville (Vanderbilt, #8 national seed) regional. Southern Miss (3) and Yale (4) are the other projected teams there.
BA also has Clemson (#2 national seed), UNC (#6), and FSU (#10) as regional hosts, with Wake Forest (2-seed), Virginia Tech (2), Louisville (2), Georgia Tech (2), Duke (3), and Miami (3) making the field.
A little hand wringing over exact order, but the two publications seem pretty firmly aligned on the ACC’s group of teams to hear their name called on selection day. That’s understandable as there’s a pretty clear divide from that group to the remainder of the conference, both in terms of RPI (Duke has the lowest current RPI of the group above at 38th) and conference record (Wake Forest and Virginia Tech both have 10-11 conference marks).
Virginia (9-9 ACC record, RPI #93) and Boston College (9-12, #49) are teams still with a glimmer of hope for an at-large bid, but with a ton of work to do to get there.
For the Wolfpack, a finishing kick against Clemson (RPI #6), at Miami (#36), at UNC (#7), and vs Stanford (#47) should provide an RPI boost to put State into that NCAA Regional host conversation with even a 6-6 record over that span. That would boost the Pack’s RPI into the Top 20 while sporting an 18-12 ACC mark, roughly on par with the 2024 Pack9’s metrics which saw State host a Regional as the #10 national seed.