Wolfpack news and notes: Duke salvages a game; Burris drafted

And some dudes are both smart and good at sports.

NC State baseball couldn't close out the Duke series with a sweep, losing 2-1 and wasting another solid start from Ryan Williamson. A win would have moved the Pack into a tie with Louisville for second (and just a game behind Florida State for first) in the monstrous ACC Atlantic (yes the Coastal is comparatively lame in baseball just like in football).

To put the Atlantic into perspective, consider that Clemson is 10^th nationally in RPI but sixth in their own division, a mere half game in front of Boston College for last place. Over in the Coastal, the sixth place team, Pitt, is 44^th in RPI and over half the division is three or more games under .500 in ACC play.

Williamson allowed just a run on three hits and a walk over 5.1, fanning six. He was pulled after just 72 pitches. I was unable to watch the game and have heard nothing indicating any sort of injury; I'm going to assume that Elliott Avent is trying to keep him fresh for the stretch run and also wanted to get the bullpen a little work with no midweek game ahead. Williamson has thrown a career-high 57.1 innings, already 19 more than last season, so it makes sense to moderate his usage a bit pre-postseason.

Joe Dunand plated State's lone run with an RBI single that scored Stephen Pitarra in the bottom of the first. The Pack went on to strand nine runners.

Evan Mendoza continued to scorch at the dish, going 2-for-3 with a walk to run his hit streak to 17 games. He's batting a whopping .365.

Austin Staley may be a threat to Tommy DeJuneas's role in late-game, high-leverage situations. Staley posted another scoreless outing over 1.1 innings to drop his ERA to 3.38. Opponents are hitting a mere .172 off of him. DeJuneas gave up what proved to be the winning run in the ninth against Duke and sports a 5.18 ERA. Opponents are hitting .295 against him and he's been prone to hard contact, having allowed eight doubles and three homers in just 24.1 innings pitched. It will be nice to have Will Gilbert back.

The Pack travel to Clemson next weekend; the entire series is available for streaming on ESPN3.

Burris and Undrafted Free Agent Signings

Benevolent overlord Steven Muma noted that Pack seniors Joe Thuney and Jacoby Brissett were snagged in the third round of the NFL Draft by the New England Patriots. Juston Burris went a round later to the Jets. NJ.com offered this write up of the selection.

Early entry David Grinnage went unselected but was inked by the Packers. Mike Rose latched on with the Giants. Quinton Schooley will a get a shot in Pittsburgh. Shadrach Thornton has yet to find an opportunity.

I'm going to try not to think about the fact that State's porous defense will be without its most productive defensive lineman and best corner next year because it's May and the football team is always great in May.

Briefly Noted...

Softball dropped two of three to Georgia Tech in its last home ACC series and haven't won a league best of three since taking two of three from Virginia Tech in its first conference series of the season. The ladies are just 5-16 in league play.

In better news, two-time national champion Nick Gwiazdowski was recently named the ACC's wrestling scholar athlete of the year. Jonathan Addison captured the equivalent honor for men's indoor track. Always awesome to see kids that go to actual classes with syllabi and whatnot win on and off the field. These two gentlemen may find themselves in the Olympics one day.

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Silencing of dissent: SolarBee fiasco exposes deeper problems in McCrory's administration

Suppression of science is a hallmark of totalitarian regimes:

Steve Tedder, with nearly 40 years of experience with the state in what’s now called the Department of Environmental Quality, is out as the leader of the Environmental Management Commission’s Water Quality Committee. The reason is simple: Tedder dared to question the decision of Gov. Pat McCrory administration’s to retract a report that was critical of the SolarBee project in Jordan Lake.

Whether it's a report on charter schools that is not "glowing enough," or an assessment of the weakness of coal ash impoundments and potential contamination of water that might result, Republicans seem determined to filter and edit data that is produced to assess their policies. They want assessments, they just don't want accurate assessments. These are not the behaviors of a democracy, they are characteristic of something else entirely:

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NC's Congressional Democrats speak out on voter suppression

The real defenders of the Constitution:

While Democrats have gone to court in Arizona to reverse this culture of discrimination and disenfranchisement, Republicans are going to court to defend laws designed to decrease voter turnout because they believe that when fewer people vote, they have a better chance of winning. Make no mistake: This is part of a consistent and concerted effort by Republicans to silence voters who do not agree with their agenda. We expect that these laws, like the one passed in North Carolina, will ultimately be declared unconstitutional, and we will continue the fight at the congressional level to restore the critical protections of the Voting Rights Act.

The sad truth is, it's not just Republican politicians who want to limit/place barriers in front of certain voters; many white people are deeply concerned about changing demographics, and their perception that they will lose their position as the primary "deciders" of how our country develops has led them to ignore blatantly unconstitutional steps by the GOP. Equality is a fine principle until it actually happens.

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NC State takes ACC baseball series against Duke

The Pack move to 21-5 in the friendly confines of the Doak.

Duke had its chance in the fourth, loading the bases with nobody out, but NC State ace Brian Brown struck out Zack Kone and then induced an inning-ending double play off the bat of Chris Proctor to thwart the threat. The Pack, leading 1-0 at the time on an Evan Mendoza homer, seized the momentum from there with some help from numerous Duke defensive miscues and eventually ran away with a 12-2 triumph.

The Pack assured themselves of a series win, their fourth straight against ACC opponents. They will go for their second sweep of a league opponent tomorrow afternoon at 1 p.m.

Mendoza's homer continued a huge week that saw him hit a go-ahead bomb against East Carolina and a walk-off single in the series opener against Duke (24-20, 9-14). The sophomore converted pitcher for NC State (31-11, 12-6) had a hit and walk and scored three times in the series clincher.

A generous Duke defense opened the floodgates for a seven-run fifth that broke the game open. After Brett Kinneman led off with a single, consecutive errors on Elliott Avent bunt attempts (sigh...though I guess this time it worked out) packed the sacks with none out. Stephen Pitarra placed a double down the leftfield line for the first two runs. An infield single from Josh McLain plated another; Brock Deatherage's well-placed drag bunt hit made it 5-0. After McLain and Deatherage executed a double steal to each move up 90 feet, Preston Palmeiro followed with a two-run single. Kinneman's second hit of the inning, a double down the rightfield line, pushed Palmeiro plate-ward to put the Pack up 8-0.

An RBI groundout from Deatherage scored Mendoza with the team's ninth run an inning later. A third Duke error contributed to the pouring on of three more insurance runs in the eighth.

Brown, despite the shaky start to the fourth, surrendered just three hits over seven innings. He walked just one, fanned eight, and dropped his ERA to 2.29 in moving to 6-1 on the season. Brown has allowed two or fewer runs in nine of his 11 starts.

Though he's been charged with four unearned runs on the season, Chris Williams kept his ERA at zero in his 15^th appearance, working a scoreless eighth. Christian Demby worked the ninth and failed to preserve State's first shutout since blanking Fairfield on March 9^th. He allowed two runs on two hits and hit a batter. Nonetheless, since allowing 15 runs to ECU on April 19^th, the Pack staff has surrendered just seven runs in five games.

Kinneman (2-for-4 to raise his average to .343) and Deatherage (2-for-5 to raise his average to .338) were the only Pack players to record a multi-hit game, but every starter save Chance Shepard had a hit, and little brother Shane Shepard came off the bench with a double.

Ryan Williamson will look for his eighth win, which would be just one shy of BYU national leader Michael Rucker's nine, in the series finale.

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Jacoby Brissett and Joe Thuney drafted by New England Patriots

So I guess, uh, we have to like the Patriots now? New England took both quarterback Jacoby Brissett and offensive lineman Joe Thuney in the third round of the 2016 NFL Draft on Friday night. They are the only NC State players selected through the first three rounds, which is pretty much what was expected up to this point.

I'm a Patriot!! So humbled and thankful to everyone who has helped me along the way #pats

— Joseph Thuney (@JosephThuney) April 30, 2016

Thuney has a bright future thanks to his excellent versatility. He not only has the measurables that NFL scouts look for, but he also has the production. (Sometimes they forget about that production part.) He played both guard and tackle well in college, which is no small feat.

Brissett provides the Patriots with some immediate quarterback depth, which might be important since Tom Brady could serve a four-game suspension to begin the 2016 season. In that case, Brissett would likely enter the season as the backup quarterback.

Jacoby on the Patriots:

"You've got one of the greatest coaches of all time in Bill Belichick, and you've got Josh McDaniels who's a very good coach, and you've got Tom Brady who you can learn from in every aspect of your life," said Brissett, "so I'm just excited to be a sponge in the room and get around those guys and learn from them."

Best of luck to Jacoby and the Tune Man. Personally I'm bummed it had to be the Patriots, but hey, there's no denying they've been put into an excellent situation right off the bat, and it's hard to ask for more than that.

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Working on Brent Jackson's plantation

The whip has been replaced by economic tyranny:

Seven former workers at Jackson Farming Company, the Sampson County farm owned by State Senator Brent Jackson, have filed a lawsuit in federal court against the farm, Jackson, and his son Rodney alleging gross violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act and the North Carolina Wage and Hour Act, and are seeking unpaid wages and damages.

Former worker José Alberto Aguilera-Hernandez says that Rodney Jackson confronted him on October 27, 2015, demanding that he pay $2,400 to replace a gas pump piece broken during a workplace accident. Aguilera-Hernandez refused, was fired on the spot, and was forced to leave the farm. Jackson then withheld back wages from the previous week’s work.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. The abuse of migrant workers may not be exclusive to North Carolina, but when a lawmaker engages in it, there is more than just a whiff of institutional wrongdoing.

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Another toxic drinking water contaminant emerges: Firefighting foam

Like we didn't already have enough to worry about:

The chemicals in the foam are known as perfluorinated compounds, or PFCs, which have been linked to prostate, kidney and testicular cancer, along with other illnesses.

North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality spokesman Jamie Kritzer said the agency is awaiting guidance from the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Defense on the issue of the foam.

When issues like this are brought up, I find it exceptionally frustrating. It's one thing when a toxic chemical, that is supposed to be controlled or otherwise kept out of the environment, is spilled due to a structural failure of some sort. That's bad, but it's an accident. But when government entities pour or spray something *they know* will make its way into our water systems, without first making sure it will do no harm to flora and fauna (that includes human animals), that's negligence bordering on the criminal. DEQ needs to get off its butt and at least begin testing, because this stuff is everywhere:

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