Seminoles improve to 18-0 with 4-3 win over Fighting Irish on St. Patrick's Day

Once again on Sunday, the Florida State offense failed to put up huge numbers. And once again, the pitching and defense were so good it didn’t matter.

Conner Whittaker pitched 6 2/3 innings and Carson Dorsey recorded the last seven outs as the Florida State Seminoles held on for a 4-3 win over the Notre Dame Fighting Irish on St. Patrick’s Day.

The Seminoles swept the series and are now 18-0, remaining the only undefeated Division-I team in the United States.

The pitching duo of Whittaker and Dorsey allowed just six hits in the win, and the Florida State defense was flawless behind them. The Seminoles not only turned two inning-ending double plays, but they also picked off two runners.

Florida State, which came into the series averaging 12 runs per game, only scored eight total the last two games. But the Seminoles still won both, thanks in large part to a defense that didn’t commit an error the entire weekend.

“The defense was the difference today,” second-year Florida State coach Link Jarrett said. “Our defense was sharp. All phases of it. Outfield defense was really good. … And you have to do that if you’re going to beat a talented team when you’re not having a lot of success offensively.”

Notre Dame actually jumped on Whittaker in the top of third with back-to-back solo home runs to right field.

But FSU slugger Cam Smith, who almost homered in his first at-bat, got one of the runs back in the bottom of the inning with a 448-foot blast over the wall in dead-center field.

The Fighting Irish scored one in the top of the fifth after a batter reached on a strikeout that catcher McGwire Holbrook couldn’t block, and then scored on a bloop double down the left-field line.

Notre Dame’s 3-1 lead didn’t last long.

James Tibbs reached on a hit-by-pitch and Jaime Ferrer unloaded on a hanging breaking ball, blasting it into the parking lot beyond the left-field fence to tie the score at 3-3.

The Seminoles then took the lead an inning later when Daniel Cantu, who was running at full speed out of the box, took advantage of an error by the Notre Dame pitcher and sped all the way to third after an errant throw to first. Cantu then scored when the Irish third baseman booted the ensuing ground ball by Holbrook.

Despite that bit of good fortune, for the second day in a row the Seminoles seemed to hit into some serious bad luck. A number of line drives were slammed directly at fielders, and a handful of fly balls were caught on the warning track.

And in the bottom of the seventh, the Seminoles had runners on the corners with one out after Smith reached on an error and Tibbs ripped a single past the second baseman. But Ferrer, who was ahead 3-0 in the count at one point, grounded into an easy double play to the shortstop.

“I can’t say the at-bats were horrid,” Jarrett said. “There were some bad 0-0, early-in-the-count outs. But there were some well-struck balls with nothing to show for it. That’s going to happen in this sport. But you have to be able to pitch, and the level of defense today was the difference in this game.”

SIGN UP: Join Warchant’s FSU Community for $1 today

It wound up not mattering, though, as the Seminoles turned a double play to get out of a jam in the top of the eighth and then Dorsey retired the side in order in the ninth, finishing it off with a called strike 3.

Afterward, the fans inside Dick Howser Stadium chanted “18-0!” as the Seminoles took the field to shake hands and celebrate yet another win.

Florida State plays again vs. Stetson on Tuesday at Howser before hitting the road for a three-game series at No. 10 Clemson.

*Talk about this story with other die-hard Florida State baseball fans in the FSU Baseball Forum*