UNC Baseball: Tar Heels cannot extinguish red-hot Liberty, loses 8-4

The UNC baseball team (10-5, 6-3 ACC) fell to the Liberty Flames (11-5, 3-0 ASUN)  8-4 Tuesday afternoon in Lynchburg, VA.

North Carolina, fresh off a series sweep of Clemson, faced the red-hot Liberty Flames who carried an eight-game winning streak into Tuesday afternoon. Despite their best efforts, the Tar Heels could not extinguish Liberty.

The Tar Heels went three up, three down in the top of the first inning. In the home first, Liberty had runners on second and third with one out. Liberty skied a ball deep into center field, and sophomore Justice Thompson leaped and snagged the potential home run to limit the Flames to just one run on a sacrifice fly to give them the early 1-0 lead.

North Carolina was unable to answer in the top of the second, but a lead off double, a single to right field and a bunt added another run for Liberty. A groundout soon pushed the runners to second and third, respectively, with one out before another sacrifice fly extended the Liberty lead 3-0.

Next, in a moment of near deja vu to the last game against Liberty, an error and less than stellar pitching pushed home an additional run in the bottom of the second. This time, a two-out error followed by a wild pitch ballooned the lead to 4-0 in favor of the Flames.

North Carolina fought back in the top of the third with a lead off single from first-year Tyler Causey, and a proceeding double by first-year Hunter Stokely put runners at second and third. Following a pop-up, junior Angel Zarate hit a sacrifice fly to give the Tar Heels their first run and make it 4-1.

Sophmore Danny Serretti hit a home run with one out to shrink the deficit to 4-2 in the top of the fourth inning. A two-out single by first-year Tomas Frick followed by a double to right field by Causey added another run for the Tar Heels to make it 4-3.

Liberty added another run in the bottom of the fifth inning to make it 5-3. Then in the bottom of the sixth, Liberty tallied another run to swell the score to 6-3.

In the top of the eighth inning, Frick hit a ground-rule double, then redshirt junior Jake Holtzapple pinch-hit and drove in Frick with a single up the middle making it 6-4 for UNC.

But in the bottom of the eighth inning, a one-out single followed by two walks set up a bases loaded scenario for Liberty with one out. First-year Nick James struck out the next batter, but surrendered a single in the next at bat that scored two more runs for Liberty, making it a lopsided 8-4 lead for the Flames, which was the eventual final.

Head Coach Scott Forbes said the walks that North Carolina issued on the mound was a big factor in the loss on Tuesday, as UNC issued 10 along with a hit batsmen.

“If you do walk that many guys, hit guys, you’re just not going to come out on top against any team, especially a good team like Liberty.”

Coach Forbes also said the less than stellar defense coupled with the struggling pitching made it much harder to win. Ironically, these same mistakes plagued UNC last week against Liberty.

Coach Forbes was optimistic about his pitching today, as eight of the 10 pitchers used were first-years, redshirt first-years or sophomores, and will improve as the season progresses.

North Carolina heads to Brighton, Mass. on Friday to face ACC rival Boston College for a weekend series.

Check back with the Keeping It Heel team for complete coverage of that game, and everything UNC baseball.