Notre Dame sophomore catcher Carson Tinney not only came back from an ACL tear in an impressively compressed timetable in 2025, his late-season statistical tear helped lift the ACC’s 16th-place team in mid-April into a legit conversation about whether they belonged in the NCAA Tournament.
A conversation that got shut down this past week by the combination of a first-round ACC Tournament loss to Boston College in extra innings and some bid-stealers in other conference tournaments this week.
The NCAA Tournament selection committee confirmed that perception on Monday during ESPN2’s bracket reveal with the Irish (32-21) on the outside looking in at the 64-team field.
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In fact, the Irish weren't even among the first four teams out.
Nine ACC teams did make the field, the second-most among conferences to the SEC’s 13, the latter with six of the tournament’s top eight seeds. North Carolina was one of three ACC regional hosts and the league’s top-seeded team in the NCAA Tourney field at No. 5.
Boston College (28-29) ended up knocking Virginia out of the field as well, apparently with a 12-8 upset of the sixth-seeded Cavaliers a night after edging the 11th-seeded Irish, 5-4, in 10 innings, on Tuesday night in Durham, N.C.
The Eagles even had eventual ACC Tournament champ North Carolina on the ropes for six innings, before the Tar Heels turned a 2-0 BC lead into a 5-2 deficit in the bottom of the seventh in an eventual 7-2 victory.
The good news for the Irish and coach Shawn Stiffler is that Tinney (.348/.498/.753) is eligible to return and won’t be eligible for the Major League Baseball Draft until July of 2026. He’ll theoretically have a strong core around Tinney to try to nudge ND into the NCAA field in 2026 for the first time since former Irish coach Link Jarrett coaxed the Irish into the College World Series in 2022.
ND’s top two starting pitchers are also underclassmen — sophomore Jack Radel and junior Rory Fox, the latter of whom is eligible for the 2025 MLB Draft. They also have some standout freshmen in the core position-player group, including outfielder/DH Bino Watters, first baseman Parker Brzustewicz, infielder Noah Coy and outfielder Jayce Lee.
But it all starts with Tinney, who led the Irish in batting average, on-base percentage, slugging, OPS (1.251), home runs (17), RBIs (53) and runs scored (52). He also threw out an ACC-high 17 would-be base stealers.
The Irish sat in 16th place out of 16 ACC teams after losing two of three on the road at Boston College in mid-April. A 7-1 home victory over Valparaiso on April 15 touched off an eight-game winning streak and a 16-3 surge heading into the ACC Tourney.
That included series wins over NCAA Tourney qualifiers Louisville and Miami and three-game sweeps over ACC non-contenders Stanford and Cal.
His numbers in the 19 games that followed the last loss to BC on April 13: a .448 batting average with a .570 on-base percentage, a 1.090 slugging percentage for a 1.660 OPS. Over that span, he has amassed 30 hits, 34 runs, seven doubles, 12 home runs, 27 RBI, and 14 walks.
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