Tar Heel baseball takes out Wolfpack in 18 innings

North Carolina baseball coach Mike Fox said he was delirious, he was dehydrated and he was sorry because what he said didn’t make any sense at times.

Fox said he didn’t have the words to describe what he had just seen and, he supposed he and his team should also apologize for keeping everyone out at the Durham Bulls Athletic Park so long.

But, “Man,” Fox said. “You have got to appreciate good pitching… You’ve got to appreciate great pitching. Oh my word.”

On their way to a 2-1 marathon win against NC State to advance to the Tar Heel’s first ACC Championship game since 2007, four North Carolina pitchers struck out 21 Wolfpack batters in 18 innings.

But the throwing forces were almost even on both sides. NC State blanked 22 Diamond Heels, combining for the second-most strike outs in NCAA history.

NC State ace Carlos Rodon lead both teams with 14 strikeouts— he was a force UNC knew it needed to match from the beginning.

“We knew we had to match Carlos (Rodon) almost pitch for pitch to just try to keep the game close and even manageable and we somehow were able to do that,” Fox said. “Trent Thornton comes in, does what he does after Hobbs (Johnson) — just gives us a great start.”

The start was Johnson’s first this season against ACC rival NC State after the series finale was rained out April 28, but the southpaw threw as successfully as he had all year, matching a season-high 9 strikeouts, even though he sad he could only barely remember throwing by the end of enough innings to fully compensate for the missed game.

“It seems like I never even started to be honest with you,” Johnson said. “I thought I threw the ball well for the most part. I made a few mistakes but threw well, threw my fast ball and was able to keep us in the game.”

After 5.1 innings of work, allowing just one run, Johnson was replaced by freshman Trent Thornton.

Thornton threw a tight 6.2 innings, allowing no hits and striking out seven batters.

UNC showed growing momentum in the eighth inning as Tar Heels Mike Zolk, Parks Jordan and Chaz Frank capitalized on their hitting and on NC State errors to score.

Chris Munnelly came in for UNC to start the sixteenth inning, striking out his first three batters before leaving runners stranded on all three bases in the seventeenth.

In the top of the eighteenth inning, Cody Stubbs sent an RBI single to center field to give North Carolina its first lead of the game at 2-1.

NC State made a case for a comeback against Munnelly in the bottom of the eighteenth as the Wolfpack’s Brett Williams, doubled and advanced to third base after a wild pitch.

With no outs, NC State looked to bring Williams home to tie the game, but Munnelly and UNC’s defense was poised and wouldn’t let that happen getting three outs to end the game.

Munnelly earned the victory in front of what was left of the ACC and state of North Carolina single-game attendance record-breaking crowd of 11,392 fans. The ending was an appropriate defense-ended inning to a pitcher’s duel game, and although he didn’t end it with a strikeout, Munnelly did what he needed to do.

“Really, I was just trying to get ahead of every batter, that was the main thing. It was just so late all of my nerves had gone to sleep,” he said about the pressure of the situation.
“Honestly, I was just trying to get three outs so we could go home.”

And he did.