Standing outside the Terrapins baseball team’s dugout Wednesday night after his team had easily dispatched Bucknell, coach Erik Bakich wouldn’t tip his hand about his weekend pitching staff.

At least, not with his words.

“We’ve got to check and see how some guys are bouncing back,” said Bakich, turning and staring into the dugout at Wednesday’s starter, Sander Beck, who was gathering his gear, “and see how their arms are doing, just so we can iron out who’s pitching which day.”

With the release of the weekend’s starters for a three-game series against No. 26 N.C. State at Bob “Turtle” Smith Stadium, Beck was nowhere to be found. The name penciled in for a Saturday start? You couldn’t miss that.

Left-hander Jimmy Reed, the team’s regular closer this season, will make his first career start tomorrow against the Wolfpack (20-7, 8-4 ACC). Reed’s longest outing of the season came only last weekend, when he pitched 4.1 innings in a 5-4 extra-inning loss to Boston College.

But if quantity’s an issue, quality certainly is not. On the season, Reed is 0-1 with a 0.48 ERA and seven saves in 13 appearances, totaling 18.2 innings for the Terps (19-12, 3-9). He’s struck out 22 batters and walked three in that span while limiting opposing batters to a .161 average.

Reed’s not the only pitcher on the move, though. Right-hander Brett Harman, who has primarily started on Sundays, will return to Friday night, where he pitched in 2010 before missing last season recovering from Tommy John surgery. Harman leads Terps starters this year with a 2.38 ERA and has a 4-1 record.

With arguably his two best pitchers now starting the first two games of the series, Bakich hopes the team won’t have to wait until Game 3 to get a win, as has been the case in the team’s three ACC victories.

“That’s kind of been what the plan is going to be, is to make sure we get an opportunity to get off to a good start to begin the series,” Bakich said. “We know what we’ve got ahead of us, but the focus for us is just to play to our potential.”

Right-hander David Carroll is set to start Sunday for the Terps, the second straight series in which he’ll start the final game. He pitched eight innings of one-run ball in the Terps’ 7-1 win over Boston College.

“You got to look at it as a pitcher,” Harman said. “You’re just going out there to pitch to the best of your abilities, not really worrying about who you’re facing because if you start thinking about that external stuff, the things you can’t control, it’s not good. You just want to go out there and do what you can do.”

Regardless of whom the Terps put on the mound, they’ll still have to face another stiff ACC challenge. The Wolfpack boast a balanced attack, combining some of the best pitching in the conference with strong hitting for a mix that has the Wolfpack tied for third place in the ACC after being picked seventh in the preseason coaches poll.

N.C. State’s Carlos Rodon and Ethan Ogburn rank 1-2 in the conference in ERA with marks of 1.49 and 1.59, respectively. Rodon, a left-handed freshman, is 4-0 on the season and will start Saturday opposite Reed. Offensively, shortstop Chris Diaz is sixth in the conference with a .378 average and leads the Wolfpack with 56 total bases.

After four league series with both pitching and offensive struggles, the Terps are more than ready for a new period of prosperity. And even as they shake up their starting rotation, the team’s pitchers know nothing about the game itself has changed.

“I know from our pitching standpoint, we got to do the best job that we can to keep the team in the game and just limit damage,” Harman said. “Hopefully, we can get at them early, and then, as a staff, we can shut them down.”

dgallen@umdbk.com