Tar Heel baseball team takes ACC title

North Carolina baseball coach Mike Fox didn’t say it.

He didn’t hear anyone on his team or staff say it, but in a press conference after the ACC Championship game, he said he sensed it Sunday morning.

The 2013 ACC Championship was the Tar Heels’ championship to win, he felt, especially after the 18-inning 2-1 marathon victory against NC State Saturday night.

“We didn’t want to go through all of that for nothing,” Fox said.

And they didn’t.

Despite getting limited rest after a Saturday game that went into the early hours of Sunday, the Tar Heels came ready to play, and won the ACC title game against Virginia Tech 4-1.

Starting pitcher Taylore Cherry said he was running on adrenaline and that there was no fatigue once he woke up.

“It didn’t sink in (that I was starting) until this morning because we were so dead tired last night,” he said. “(This morning) I didn’t really feel the fatigue, especially because of all the adrenaline that I had going in the situation.”

All-ACC third baseman Colin Moran said he felt the same, close to unaffected by the lack of sleep due to the game against the Wolfpack that didn’t end until well after 1 o’clock in the morning.

“It wasn’t too hard,” Moran said. “I mean, when you’re playing for the championship it’s not very hard to get up for it.”

“I’d be lying if I said we weren’t a little bit tired, but you can run on adrenaline.”

Moran got two hits off the adrenaline, as did designated hitter Landon Lassiter who’d failed to get on base outside of being walked Saturday night.

Lassiter and Moran started up the UNC offense in order in the first inning, with consecutive singles. With the pair on corners, Skye Bolt came to bat and scored Lassiter with a ball up the middle.

“That’s Landon. I have great confidence in him, that’s why I kept him in there last night,” Fox said of Lassiter’s offense-starting performance. “I’m not going over five or six at bats, I’m going over 200 or however many he’s had over the course of our season.”

Fatigue continued to show no effect on the Tar Heels’ play through the end of the game as North Carolina used the advantage of Virginia Tech errors to score two security runs in the eighth.

“Our guys were really excited today in the stadium,” Fox said. “I could just sense it. They had the music going this morning when we walked in the locker room and just, very few of them, if any of them, looked like they were tired.”

“It’s just youth, it’s a great thing.”

North Carolina played 32 innings of baseball between the ending of the Hokies last game before the UNC-VT championship game.

But for the Diamond Heels, grinding through to a title was about accomplishing something they set out to do at the beginning of the season.

The way that it happened just made it that much more memorable.

“An ACC Championship year, it’s something that I know every single one of those guys wrote on their goal sheet,” Fox said. “They’ll be able to always say they were 2013 ACC Champions, and they played in an 18 inning game, and they played in front of the biggest crowd and there are a lot of great memories from this tournament they’ll be able to take with them.”

All added memories aside though, securing the first league title since 2007 was what mattered most.

“It’s very special,” Fox said. “It doesn’t matter how you navigate through to get it, it’s just the fact that you’ve won it.”