Miami Hurricanes’ ACC tournament run ends with semifinal loss to Georgia Tech
Georgia Tech has shown time and again this season that it has arguably the most potent offense in college baseball this season.
The Miami Hurricanes learned that the hard way on Saturday.
Georgia Tech punished Miami pitching all day as the No. 1 seed Yellow Jackets beat the No. 5 seed Hurricanes 9-3 in the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament semifinals at Charlotte’s Truist Field.
Miami (38-18) now waits to find out where it will begin the NCAA tournament, with the 64-team field set to be revealed on Monday. The Hurricanes are projected to be safely in the field but will go on the road for the regional round.
Georgia Tech (47-9) will play the winner of the other semifinal between No. 2 seed North Carolina and No. 14 seed Pittsburgh in the conference championship game at noon Sunday.
The Yellow Jackets, who entered Saturday leading the nation in batting average (.358), runs scored (594) and on-base-plus slugging (1.104) and ranked fourth in home runs (120) hit Miami starting pitcher AJ Ciscar early and often on Saturday. Georgia Tech hit three two-run home runs against the sophomore — by Vahn Lackey in the first inning and then Ryan Zuckerman in both the third and fourth innings — to take an early 6-0 lead.
Ciscar was pulled after 3 2/3 innings, giving up the six runs — tied for a season high — on seven hits and two walks with three strikeouts. It was just the third time this season Ciscar did not complete at least five innings. It was also just the third time Ciscar walked multiple batters this season. He had issued just nine walks over 75 1/3 innings through his first 13 starts this season.
Georgia Tech then tacked on three runs against Miami’s bullpen, scoring on a pair of wild pitches (by Ryan Bilka in the fifth and Erick Peralta in the seventh) and an Alex Hernandez RBI single off Bilka in the sixth.
Miami attempted to mount a comeback late. The Hurricanes scored two runs in the sixth inning on a Vance Sheahan RBI double and a Georgia Tech wild pitch that scored Dylan Dubovik. UM also scored on an eighth inning Gabriel Milano sacrifice fly that plated Alex Sosa.
But the damage was done at that point with Miami missing a slew of opportunities throughout the game. The Hurricanes had nine hits but went just 3 for 11 with runners in scoring position and 7 for 20 overall with runners on base.
Miami opened the ACC tournament with a pair of wins, defeating No. 12 seed Stanford 11-2 on Wednesday and No. 4 seed Boston College 8-2 on Thursday.
This story was originally published May 23, 2026 at 2:13 PM.
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