UNC Baseball can’t overcome offensive struggles, lose Game 1

The UNC baseball program began NCAA Tournament play on Friday evening against the No. 2 seed Iowa Hawkeyes in the Terre Haute Regional.

It wasn’t the start to the NCAA Tournament that the UNC baseball program had in mind when they arrived in Terre Haute this week. However, on Friday night, the Diamond Heels’ offense couldn’t overcome several struggles in their first game against the No. 2 Seed Iowa Hawkeyes.

This Hawkeyes team is known for its excellent pitching staff and the pitching staff certainly came through for them against the Tar Heels, pitching out of several jams and around runners on base. Part of that can be pointed to the Carolina offensive struggles though.

Scott Forbes opted to go with pitcher Jake Knapp over ace Max Carlson in hopes of using Carlson for the winner’s bracket game on Saturday. Knapp didn’t give the Tar Heels the outing they were necessarily hoping for, going 2.1 innings, allowing six hits and three runs. The poor start forced Forbes to turn to potential Sunday starter Kevin Eaise from the bullpen. Eaise gave the Tar Heels a good outing with 3.2 innings, only allowing one hit.

The pitching and defense weren’t terrible, giving up the Carolina offense chances to make a comeback. Unfortunately, the Hawkeye pitching was just too much for the Tar Heels to overcome.

The Diamond Heels had a huge chance in the fourth inning when Tomas Frick hit a leadoff double followed by a Hunter Stokely walk before both advanced to second and third respectively on a wild pitch. Johnny Castagnozzi then walked to load the bases with one out.

However, the best the Tar Heel offense could do was an Alberto Osuna sacrifice fly that scored one run. The Tar Heels reloaded the bases with two outs in the same inning, but the inning ended with an infield ground out before any more runs could score and Carolina trailed 3-1 after four innings with the next two innings being silent for both teams offensively.

The Iowa offense added some extra insurance in the eighth inning for their bullpen. Leadoff walks are never a good thing, and that’s what happened. Following that, back-to-back base hits led to an RBI for the Hawkeyes. Iowa then used a suicide squeeze to get another run and take a 5-1 lead.

Those two insurance runs from the Hawkeyes in the eighth proved to be significant. The Tar Heels tried to get some ninth-inning magic going, but it appeared to be too little, too late. A Castgnozzi leadoff walk was followed by an Osuna two-run home run to cut the deficit to 5-3.

Colby Wilkerson then got on base with a single to the left-center field gap. Casey Cook, who had a 44-game on-base streak snapped at the ACC tournament, couldn’t advance Wilkerson though, grounding into a fielder’s choice for the first out of the inning. Mac Horvath had struggled heavily on Friday, going 0-4 with four strikeouts prior to his ninth-inning at-bat. However, he was able to draw a walk with one out in the ninth inning to put the tying run on base for the Diamond Heels.

Jackson Van De Brake came to the plate 0-2 with two walks on the day but came up with a double to right field to cut the lead to 5-4 with only one out and putting runners on second and third. Frick struck out looking which brought Stokely to the plate and the final chance for the Tar Heels. Stokely struck out swinging on a ball in the dirt and the Tar Heels rally ended with the tying run 90 feet from home.

Prior to the attempted ninth-inning rally, the Tar Heels were just 4-25 from the plate, going 0-12 with runners on base and 0-9 with runners in scoring position. Iowa was 9-32, 5-20 with runners on base, and 3-11 with runners in scoring position.

The Diamond Heels will play No. 4 seed Wright State Saturday at 12:00 PM ET in an elimination game on ESPN+. The Raiders led No. 1 Indiana State 5-3 in the eighth inning on Friday and will not be an easy test for the Tar Heels. We expect Max Carlson to get the start. The winner of that game will face the loser of the Saturday nightcap between No. 1 Indiana State and No. 2 Iowa on Sunday at 12:00 PM ET.

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