JACKSON TWP — He's not heading way down south and he's not staying up north, either.

Matt Smith is heading right where he wants to be.

The Seneca Valley senior right-hander will continue his academic and baseball career at Georgetown University in Washington D.C.

Smith is among the early signees with the Hoyas — and with him, academics come first.

“I want to get into business school and they've got a good one,” the 6-foot-3, 205-pound Smith said. “I really want to play professional baseball, too, so facing good competition is important to me.

“Teams like Louisville, Connecticut, Cincinnati ... I need to face teams like that.”

Smith is ranked No. 1 academically in Seneca Valley's 2011-12 senior class, sporting a 4.7 grade point average.

Cincinnati, Vanderbilt, Duke, William & Mary, Penn, Columbia and Wake Forest are other schools Smith considered.

“I was tempted to go down south, but Georgetown is right by Virginia and the weather gets warmer a little quicker there than it does around here,” he said.

Smith was 11-1 with an earned run average in the 2.00s last season. He tallied a lot of strikeouts with a fastball clocked between 88 and 91 miles per hour, on average.

He was the ace pitcher on a Raider team that won the WPIAL championship and finished third in the state tournament.

“Matt improved dramatically from his sophomore to junior year,” SV coach Eric Semega said. “He fell behind hitters a lot as a sophomore and got hit hard as a result.

“He fine-tuned his mechanics and learned the value of pitching ahead in the count. He's very strong in the cerebral part of pitching. He knows how to set hitters up and force them to hit his pitch.”

Georgetown coach Pete Wilk has been there for 12 seasons and is the program's all-time victory leader with 247. The Hoyas are coming off a 23-33 season last spring and have struggled in recent years.

The Hoyas have not had a winning season since 1985. They are 10-43 in the Big East over the past two seasons, 58-153 in the conference since 2004.

Recruiting coordinator Curtis Brown is the team's pitching coach. He came over from the University of Richmond, where he coached one of the top mound staffs in the country.

“I'm already on a program designed by Coach Brown,” Smith said. “I'm very confident he can help me succeed at the college level and continue to improve.”

Smith throws a four-seam and two-seam fastball, a sharp curve and a circle changeup.

“He fits into the mold of the best pitchers we've had here very well,” Semega said. “Matt is going to get drafted at some point. He has that kind of ability.

“He's committed to Georgetown and the MLB scouts know that. Because of what it would take to get him, he may not get picked until the low rounds next spring. But he's certainly good enough to go.”

Smith admitted that he would have to be selected “incredibly high” to forego his education at Georgetown.

“I'm pretty committed to getting a college education,” he said.

Georgetown has had seven players selected in the MLB draft during Wilk's tenure at the university.