UNC Baseball walks off West Virginia in Super Regional opener

It was setting up to be a great story for West Virginia. You had a coach in his final season trusting his ace pitcher to carry them through all nine innings and get them one game away from their first run at the College World Series. Derek Clark had pitched eight full innings and went 133 pitches, something unheard of in this day and age of strict pitch counts and analytics trying to keep players from seeing one pitcher too many times. He had given up five runs, but the West Virginia offense had managed to get him a lead, and all he had to do was get three outs.

Unfortunately for him and West Virginia, pitch 134 completely erased that story.

Luke Stevenson tattooed the first pitch of the ninth inning to straight away centerfield, and it just cleared the fence causing Boshamer Stadium to erupt, and Clark to slump down knowing that his effort was likely about to go for nothing. He gave up another single to Johnny Castagnozzi, and that was it. Clark was pulled, and what came next felt inevitable.

Part of the reason that Clark was asked to pitch so much was that the West Virginia bullpen was “hanging on by a thread.” To their credit, they managed to blunt the Tar Heel momentum as Aidan Major came in and retired the first two Tar Heels he faced. Unfortunately, Vance Honeycutt was next.

Major let the count get to 3-0 before throwing a fastball that Honeycutt missed. With the count 3-1, Major decided to take a chance and get Honeycutt swinging again...except Vance didn’t miss this one.

For the third time in the Tar Heels’ four wins at Boshmaer this postseason, they used a last winning rally to take the victory. A game that sure seemed like it was about to become the talk of college baseball for a heroic pitching performance instead added another chapter to the magical story the Tar Heels are writing this postseason. Carolina took the win 8-6 and now lead the Super Regionals 1-0.

Early on it looked like the game was going to be a cake walk for Carolina. After starter Shea Sprague gave up a solo homer in the third to put West Virginia on top 1-0, Carolina immediately answered by drawing multiple walks on Clark, loading the bases, and then Parks Harbor would single up the middle to start getting them home. The WVU outfield then misplayed the ball which would cleare the bases. Then last weekend’s hero Gavin Gallaher would drive him home to get the Tar Heels a 4-1 lead.

Unfortunately, Sprague was unable to hold that lead. West Virginia was able to get one back in the fourth as Stevenson inexplicably missed a tag at home when the ball got there well ahead of the runner. Then it all fell apart in the sixth as Sprague gave up a two run shot to Reed Chumley. Sprague would be pulled after giving up another single, however, Matthew Matthijs then gave up another home run to give West Virginia a 6-4 lead.

Meanwhile Clark had settled in after that shaky third inning, confounding the Tar Heels offense and holding the Tar Heels to just one run, off a solo homer by Colby Wilkerson through the eighth inning. The Tar Heels’ bullpen also steadied as Matthijs and Ben Peterson got them to the seventh. Then Matt Poston somehow escaped a two on, no out jam without giving up a run. He went on to keep the Mountaineers off the scoreboard the rest of the game.

The Tar Heels are now one win away from their first trip to Omaha since 2018. They’ll hope to do so Saturday with usual Friday starter Jason DeCaro on the hill, and comfortable in the knowledge that one of the best arms in their pen—Dalton Pence—didn’t have to throw a single pitch on Friday. Meanwhile West Virginia will have to pick up the pieces and try to scrape together two wins with a pitching staff that couldn’t be trusted to have an arm to relieve Clark in the ninth.

Game two is Saturday night at 8 PM at the Bosh.