UNC starter hits home run after 11 game drought

Eleven games into the season, the No. 1 starting lineup in the country just hit its first home run.

Before its 10-2 win against Davidson on Tuesday, not one regular North Carolina baseball starter had homered. But on a cold, rainy afternoon at Boshamer Stadium, Cody Stubbs finally went yard.

“We have some guys who are capable of hitting the ball out of the ballpark, and I think they will come,” coach Mike Fox said. “It was nice to see Cody put a good swing on that one.”

The top-ranked Tar Heels (11-0) are undefeated this season, but it hasn’t been because of overwhelming power. They’ve been manufacturing runs and driving the gaps, but they haven’t been clearing the fence.

That’s how the game against Davidson (5-6) started — in the third inning, the Tar Heels scratched out the game’s first three runs on a soft Colin Moran single through the left side of the infield, a wild pitch and an error.

Then Stubbs came up.

With Skye Bolt on third, Stubbs turned on a 2-1 pitch and launched a line drive through the trees behind Boshamer Stadium’s right-field fence.

“The guy had only a fastball,” Stubbs said. “So I was sitting on fastball, pretty much. And he threw it right down the middle, thank goodness.”

It was the big blow in the game, giving UNC an early five-run lead that was more than enough for starting pitcher Trent Thornton. He went 5.2 innings, allowed two unearned runs and struck out five Wildcats to get his second win.

The Tar Heels did have a pinch-hit home run earlier in the season — a Grayson Atwood grand slam against Seton Hall. But for all the their early-season success, when Stubbs took Davidson reliever Nick Neitzel deep it was the first time a UNC starter had homered.

But Fox isn’t too worried.

“I like home runs, don’t get me wrong,” Fox said. “But I don’t like them as much as everybody else seems to like them. We’re not going to rely on them to score runs.”

Fox said he’s been happy with the way the Tar Heels have been hitting balls hard all over the field, especially Moran, the team’s most proven hitter. And he said the small number of home runs has been partially due to luck.

The Tar Heels played three games last weekend in the Houston Astros’ Minute Maid Park, a major league stadium. And Fox said that during the road trip, three players — Stubbs, Moran, and Korey Dunbar — hit fly balls that would have gone out in Chapel Hill.

Even Moran, the Tar Heels’ No. 3 hitter who led the team with nine homers in 2011, said the power outage isn’t disconcerting. He said he isn’t pressing to hit homers even though he bats in the middle of the lineup.

“I don’t really try (to hit home runs) — if I keep hitting balls hard, sometimes they go over the fence,” Moran said. “Hopefully they come in bunches.”

Contact the desk editor at sports@dailytarheel.com.