Last Week’s Results: Defeated Coastal Carolina, won series over NCSU 2-1.
Record Last Week: 3-1
Overall Record: 22-6
ACC Record: 9-3, 1st place in Coastal Divsion
Upcoming Schedule: 4/4 vs Elon, 4/6-4/8 at Miami
Heels weather their first week without Colin Moran with their fourth straight series win in ACC play.
The midweek game for UNC came against Coastal Carolina with the Heels winning 7-6 in ten innings on a walk-off hit from Grayson Atwood. Prior to the heroics from Atwood, Cody Stubbs went to the play with two outs in the bottom of the ninth with Jacob Stallings on and hit a two run home run to tie the game. Michael Morin came in to pitch the tenth to keep the game tied before Atwood singled to center driving in Brian Holberton with the winning run. Cody Penny started for UNC lasting four innings before Mike Fox turned the bullpen revolving door on that saw the Heels use a total of eight pitchers for the game.
In the weekend series the Heels dropped the Friday opener to Wake Forest 7-6 in 12 innings. UNC fell behind 6-1 after Kent Emanuel gave up three runs in 6.1 innings then Chris McCue gave up the other three to put the Heels in a deep hole. Then came the eighth inning where UNC got five runs, the last three on a two out double from Parks Jordan that plated Holberton, Stubbs and Tom Zengel. Wake got a sac fly RBI in the top of the 12th and UNC failed to score with two on in the bottom of the inning to drop the game. Michael Morin pitched four innings and saw UNC threaten to score in the 9th, 11th and 12th innings only to come up empty.
On Saturday the Heels did Michael Morin a huge service by jumping out to an early 6-0 lead then keeping the game under control to even the series with a 7-3 win. UNC had a big first inning scoring five runs Jacob Stallings, Cody Stubbs and Michael Russell all had doubles. In fact UNC has seven doubles on the day, three of them belonging to Stallings. On the downside, UNC made a habit of wasting said doubles in later innings. Much like the Friday game, UNC used multiple pitchers with Chris Munnelly only going 3.2 innings despite only giving up one run and throwing 49 pitches.
The Sunday game saw more late inning heroics from the Heels. UNC fell behind 2-0 but took the lead with three runs in the fifth which included yet another Stallings RBI double. In the ninth, Morin came in to get the save but gave up a run to send it to the bottom of the inning where Parks Jordan singled to drive in Tom Zengel to win the game.
UNC now sits atop the Coastal Division with a one game lead over Miami just in time for a three game series in Coral Gables this weekend. If UNC can win the series it will open up at least a two game lead on the Hurricanes.For the first time since 1990, UNC has won the first four ACC series of the season.
Stallings was named ACC Co-Player of the Week for his big week which included his two run homer in the win over NCSU last Monday.