May 10, 2008

• 2008 ACC Softball Championship Site
• Webcast Archived on ACC Select
• Box Score
• theACC.com Photo Gallery 
  (Photos available for purchase. Check back to theACC.com/photostore early in the week for more photos.)

COLLEGE PARK, Md. - Led by sophomore pitcher Lindsay Campana, who tossed her second complete game shutout of the tournament, NC State upset top-seeded North Carolina, 1-0, Saturday afternoon at the 2008 Atlantic Coast Conference Softball Championship in Robert E. Taylor Stadium. NC State will face Virginia Tech, which downed Florida State early Saturday, in Sunday's championship final.

Campana, who improved to 19-17 with the win, was at the top of her game again Saturday afternoon. After one-hitting Georgia Tech in NC State's opening round game on Thursday, Campana returned to hold the league's best-hitting team to just three hits, while striking out seven batters. In two starts in ACC Championship play, she has given up only four hits and zero runs in 14 innings pitched, dropping her team-leading ERA to 1.46.

Giving the Wolfpack its only run of the game was Kristine Bechtholdt. A sophomore right fielder from Ridgefield, Wash., she put the Wolfpack ahead for good in the bottom of the second inning with a massive home run to center field. For Bechtholdt, the homer was her eighth and perhaps most important one of the 2008 season, and would provide the Wolfpack all the offense it would need.

With the early advantage, Campana went on to dominate the games' final innings. In the fifth, she would mow down the Heels for an easy 1-2-3 inning, before allowing just a single base runner in each of the game's final two stanzas. In the seventh, Campana would ring up her sixth and seventh strikeouts of the game for outs one and two, and then record her final out of the evening on a grounder to third base.

For NC State, Sunday's appearance in the championship final will be the second in school history, and the second time in the last three years. The Wolfpack, now 31-26, made their first showing in the final in 2006, when they defeated Florida State, 4-1, to earn the first and only ACC softball title in school history. In 14 all-time contests with the Hokies, NC State is 7-7.

Sunday's final, which includes a No. 5 seed for the second time in the last three years, is scheduled to begin at 12:00 noon inside the University of Maryland's Robert E. Taylor Stadium. The game will be carried live by the league's Regional Sports Network - FSN Florida, FSN South, Comcast SportsNet Mid-Atlantic and New England Sports Network (NESN).