HOKIES CAP OFF REGULAR SEASON WITH WIN OVER SEMINOLES

BLACKSBURG – The No. 15 Hokies (40-10, 18-6 ACC) finished their regular season against a top-10 ACC foe in the No. 9 Seminoles (44-8, 18-3), with a hard-fought 8-6 victory.

After losing the first two games and the series, Tech needed to win on Sunday to avoid the weekend sweep—a feat no team has successfully accomplished since Duke in 2024. 

“Cori [McMillan] started a talk in our lunchroom before the game,” Tech pitcher Emma Lemley said. “All the upperclassmen kind of had something to chime in … just trying to get everybody on the same page again because it felt like we weren’t quite there. 

“So we just needed that little push, and I think talking it out before the game this morning really helped us.”

Within the circle, a battle between two southpaws commenced. Emma Mazzarone, the sophomore, took the rubber for Tech.

The Seminoles have outscored the Hokies 4-0 in the first inning over the first two games, which has been tough for Tech to fight back against. Five pitches into the affair, leadoff batter Isa Torres brought Florida State ahead with a solo shot to make it 1-0. 

Redshirt senior Julia Aspel had a tough task in the circle following a no-hitter thrown by her teammate Jazzy Francik on Saturday, but she started the first inning with a perfect frame, indicating the start to another possible commanding victory from the top ACC squad. 

“I feel like for the past couple of weeks we all felt like we had to do too much in our at-bat, we were all trying to hit that ‘five-run’ homerun,” Tech outfielder Cori McMillan said. 

“The point of a team is nobody has to do it by themselves and I think we got away from that. We had to talk about how much we trust each other and how good we know we are.”

This testament needed to be put on display after the Seminoles put two more on the board against the Hokies in the top of the second. RBI singles from Bueno and then Torres, who was then two-for-two with two RBIs, brought the score to 3-0.

Going back to Friday, seven innings had passed since Tech last had a hit. 

Walks sprinkled in a few innings spiked the bare minimum of momentum for the Hokies. A leadoff four-pitch walk was drawn from designated player Kylie Aldridge, which brought center fielder Bre Peck up to the plate, and she got the hit the Hokies were looking for—sending both herself and Alridge in a trot around the bases, making it a one-run deficit. 

“Everyone has a job and everyone does it great, as long as everyone keeps fighting and keeps swinging at the pitch they like, good things will happen when good things need to happen,” McMillan said. 

A long, drawn-out, nine-pitch walk led off the third frame for Florida State at the plate. Great plate discipline from Katie Dack placed her at first, and within two batters, she was racing home on a passed ball without another Seminole recording a hit, stealing a run from the Hokies, which made it 4-2. 

Clearing the bases and her mind, Mazzarone entered a zone, retiring the next two State batters in order and collecting her first strikeout of the contest in the process. 

McMillan brought the Hokies right back into striking distance with a no-doubt shot that would have clobbered the scoreboard without the protective netting—minimizing the damage from the run suffered in the top of the frame. 

“All year, we have preached how good we know we are, we know we can win any game we're put into,” McMillan said. “And we know that anyone can do any task they're put into … having that reminder really flipped a switch for us.” 

Heading into the fourth, the Seminoles had scored in 14 of the 16 innings in Blacksburg. Mazzarone collected a perfect inning in the fourth to start the momentum shift that Tech had been searching for all weekend. 

To combat this, the Seminoles were bringing in what had been the kryptonite to the Hokies, freshman Francik, who no-hit Tech for the first time since 2018 on Saturday. However, Sunday was a different story, as Francik gave up back-to-back doubles from Bre Peck and Jordan Lynch which knotted the game at four runs each. 

One more perfect frame signified the full momentum shift, which was passed on to McMillan, who was leading off the bottom of the fifth against Annabelle Widra. 

McMillan hit her second solo shot of the game to give the Hokies their first lead of the entire weekend—before two batters and two hits later, catcher Zoe Yaeger one-upped McMillan with a two-run jack, scoring LeGette in the process, giving Tech a 7-4 lead. 

“I knew the momentum was all on us, that as long as we kept swinging and put the ball in play, we could keep the momentum on our side,” McMillan said. “Florida State is a really good team and we knew their defense is amazing, so we knew that we were going to have to hit balls hard.”

The explosive offense of the Seminoles could never truly be counted out of any ballgame—three-runs can be tackled within an inning for a program as talented as them. 

In an unorthodox way, the lineup would be juiced for Torres. After a hat-trick of base on balls threatened to take away Tech’s lead in an instant. Torres tacked two more RBIs onto her extraordinary weekend with a two-out single, bringing Florida State back within one, 7-6. 

A game-tying unassisted putout at second base from Annika Rohs was overturned to end the inning after originally being called safe. 

“That’s just Anni doing Anni things, I mean she does that day in and day out in practice,” Yaeger said. 

For good measure, a four-pitch walk by McMillan signaled the fourth and final pitching change for Florida State, bringing in Friday’s starter, Ashtyn Danley. A shifty swipe of second placed McMillan in scoring position. Yaeger tacked on an insurance run for the Hokies with an RBI single. 

Lemley entered the final regular season with one task, close the game and cap off the regular season with a victory—how becoming this would also be her 12th career save, officially taking the step past Angela Tincher for sole possession of first place for all-time Hokie saves. 

Four batters later, Lemley had done just that, collecting two strikeouts in way to causing a celebration to break out on the infield dirt—ending a stellar regular season for the Hokies with 40 wins and bringing momentum into the postseason. 

“40 wins is the baseline for having a good season,” Tech head coach Pete D’Amour said. “We’ve been consistent. We’ve been top-15, top-20 since we’ve been here and it’s been a good year together. 

“They’re [Florida State] as good as anybody, and we beat them today, so that tells us we’re pretty good too.”