UNC Baseball: Tar Heels need to finish strong against NC State

UNC baseball team will need to finish strong against NC State in hopes of capturing ACC Coastal Division title

On Thursday night, the North Carolina Tar Heels beat N.C. State by a score of 5-3 to keep pace with Georgia Tech and Miami in the Atlantic Coast Conference Coastal Division.

It was a close game throughout, and one that saw the Tar Heels trailing for most of it. That was until they scored two runs in the seventh inning to take a 4-3 lead before adding an insurance run in the bottom of the eighth.

Aaron Sabato was the player of the game for North Carolina on Thursday night, and really,  all of college baseball. The star first baseman notched the Tar Heels’ first cycle since 2012, getting a hit in all four of his plate appearance and driving in four of the team’s five RBIs.

It was Sabato that got the Tar Heels on the board in the first inning, crushing a two-run home run to straight-away center field. The Wolfpack strung together four consecutive two-out hits in the third inning, and took advantage of a UNC error to take a 3-2 lead.

That lead would stand for better than four innings until Sabato struck again in the seventh inning with a two-run triple that put the Tar Heels back out in front by a run. Ike Freeman smacked a solo home run in the eighth inning to increase the Tar Heels’ lead to 5-3, which would be the final score of the game. Sabato increased his hit streak to eight games, while Michael Busch reached base for the 26th consecutive game.

For North Carolina to have a shot at winning the Coastal Division title, they’ll likely need to sweep the series against N.C. State, and get some help from other teams in the conference; namely last-place Pittsburgh. The Panthers are visiting Georgia Tech this weekend, and the Yellow Jackets can win the Coastal Division outright with a series sweep. And even if they win just 2-of-3 games against Pitt, they hold the head-to-head tiebreaker over North Carolina.

In their only series of the season, Georgia Tech took two out of three games against the Tar Heels in Atlanta. North Carolina does, however, hold the tiebreaker over Miami thanks to a 2-to-1 series victory in mid-March.

The Tar Heels take the field tomorrow at 6:00 p.m. EST in hopes of winning the division and strengthening their case to host one of 16 NCAA regional sites.