Heels win another tight one again
Tommy Coyle (TarHeelBlue.com)
The Men’s Baseball team played yesterday and once again, looking at the recap from the official site, the theme of the game was “come from behind win”. In this one 11th ranked North Carolina (7-1) beat Gardner-Webb (2-7) by the final score of 6-5. The good news is that it seems the Heels will not give up and work as hard as possible to get the wins. The other side to that is, like it or not, should a team ranked as high as UNC is be falling behind to sub .500 teams such as Maine and Gardner-Webb? For now I am glad that Carolina is winning games, but as the competition gets harder and harder I want to see if these comebacks happen as often.
On the mound it was RS sophomore Garrett Davis, who started and threw for 2.2 innings. In that time the Heel allowed four runs (all earned) on four hits and three walks, while striking out two. Carolina then used two more pitchers for a total of 4.2 IP who combined on allowing just a run on just one hit and three walks against five K’s. Finally it’s freshman Michael Morin (2-0), who got the win, as he kept the Running Bulldogs shutdown on a hit, no walks and two strike outs. On the offensive side the Tar Heels had 12 hits in all (compared to G-W’s 9), with three batters having multiple hits in the game, while senior short stop Ryan Graepel had three RBIs in this one, and would have had more as one of his hits was a game winning single on bases loaded. Junior left fielder Ben Bunting and freshman second baseman Tommy Coyle scored four of the six runs for UNC.
Gardner-Webb took the lead right off the bat, getting 2 runs in the top of the first (2-0 G-W). Carolina answered back with two of their own in the bottom of the second (2-2). G-W didn’t wait long, and in the top of the third scored two more runs (4-2 G-W). The Heels scored one of their own in the bottom part of the inning (4-3 G-W). Then Fox’ squad scored two more in the bottom of the fifth (5-3 UNC). The Running Bulldogs got another run in the seventh to tie it up (5-5), and it was a hit by Graepel in the bottom of the ninth that gave the win to the Heels (6-5 UNC).
Once again head coach Mike Fox must be wondering how his team keeps leaving double digit runners on bases in these games. That too has to be on the coach’s mind when he prepares for the next series, which will be against Michigan, starting today at 3:00 p.m.EST at Boshamer Stadium.
