No. 6 Tar Heels Set To Host Coastal Carolina and Western Carolina
April 23, 2018 | Baseball
No. 6 North Carolina will host a pair of midweek games against No. 16 ranked Coastal Carolina and Western Carolina on Tuesday and Wednesday, respectively, with both games slated for 6 p.m. ET. Tuesday's matchup against Coastal will be televised on ESPNUÂ while Wednesday's game will be on ACC Network Extra. Both games can also be heard on radio on GoHeels.com.
BASEBALL NOTEBOOK
By Pat James, GoHeels.com
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Looking to sweep a three-game series against Georgia Tech for the first time since 1996, the North Carolina baseball team defeated the Yellow Jackets 10-3 Sunday.
The series sweep marked the third straight ACC series win for the Tar Heels. In the previous two, UNC won series at Miami and at Virginia for the first time since 2008 and 2012, respectively. So speaking with reporters after Sunday's win, coach Mike Fox recognized the magnitude of his team's most recent accomplishment.
"We did something that's pretty hard to do, again," he said. "It's not impossible, but it's improbable you're going to do that in this league against a really good team. We've got to give a lot of credit to our kids. The win (Saturday) night, and then we just carried it over to today.
"It was a pretty special weekend. It was important, absolutely."
The sweep moved the Tar Heels (27-13, 15-6 ACC) into first place in the Coastal Division. They're now 1 1/2 games ahead of Duke. Carolina faces the Blue Devils in a three-game series from May 11-13 in Durham.
UNC is also tied for first in the ACC overall with N.C. State, which it will begin a three-game series with on Friday in Raleigh. Before then, the Tar Heels host Coastal Carolina and Western Carolina at 6 p.m. on Tuesday and Wednesday, respectively.
"We're just looking weekend to weekend," Michael Busch said. "Obviously, it was nice to know we're leading the Coastal Division going into those two big weekends. But we just go week by week, and we'll go to State next weekend. First, we've got two midweeks to take care of."
Busch's bat
Busch added to his team-leading home run total with his third-inning blast Sunday. The home run was his 10th of the season and sixth in ACC play, tied for the most by any player in the league against conference competition.
His 10 home runs are the most by a UNC player through 40 games since since Dustin Ackley and Levi Michael hit 11 and 10, respectively, through the first 40 games of the 2009 season. Ackley and Michael finished with 22 and 13 home runs, respectively, that season.Â
Since 2009, when Mark Fleury also had 12 home runs, only four Tar Heels had hit double-digit home runs in a season before Busch accomplished the feat Sunday.
"I wasn't trying to go into the season wanting to hit more home runs," Busch said. "After last year, I just wanted to go in and try to help the team as best as possible and just have better at-bats than I did last year.Â
"I feel like I struggled on taking balls and swinging at strikes (as a freshman); I was more swinging at the pitches that the pitchers wanted and not the pitches I wanted to swing at. This year, I feel like I'm a lot more comfortable in the box and swinging at the pitches I need to swing at."
Busch is also hitting .325 on the season. His 46 RBIs lead the ACC.
"Every time he's up there, I think the other team is scared when he gets in the box," Fox said, "because he doesn't get cheated, he can hit lefties and he can pop a ball out. Even the couple of balls he got out on (Sunday), he hit hard. Michael has been pretty special for us this year."
Criswell's consistency
No player has emerged more in UNC's three straight ACC series wins than Cooper Criswell, who has worked his way into the weekend rotation.
Criswell, a JUCO transfer, started the season in the bullpen. He pitched 30 innings across 16 appearances, posting a 1.80 ERA. In his last relief appearance against Miami on April 7, he surrendered one run and struck out 13 of the 20 batters he faced across 5 2/3 innings.
That effort earned him his first start against UVA on April 14. He allowed five runs on eight hits across 3 2/3 innings, but bounced back against Georgia Tech on Sunday, when he surrendered one run on four hits in seven innings. The outing matched the longest by a Tar Heel starting pitcher since Austin Bergner tossed eight shutout innings against Pittsburgh on March 17.
"He recovers really quickly, so he's ready to go the next day if he's in relief," Fox said. "He just comes down here every day and he's the same. He's really only had one outing that's been suspect. The rest of them have been really, really good."
Criswell's ability to throw all three of his pitches for strikes, perhaps more than anything, is why Fox said he'll start one of the three games against N.C. State. Over his last three games, Criswell has thrown strikes on 72.9 percent (183-of-251) of his pitches.
"I'm not trying to overpower anybody or anything like that," Criswell said. "I just try to hit my spot. We have nine great defenders behind me every time I go out there on the mound, so I just trust them to make the plays behind me."
