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Baseball Crushes Eight Homers In 12-5 Rout Of NC State
April 20, 2002 | Baseball
April 20, 2002
CHAPEL HILL - North Carolina crushed eight home runs, one shy of the single-game school record, in routing NC State, 12-5, Saturday afternoon in ACC baseball action at Boshamer Stadium. Chris Maples became just the 10th player in school history to hit three home runs in one game, while Sean Farrell added two to lead UNC's big-hitting attack. Carter Harrell (7-3) pitched 4.2 strong innings out of the bullpen for the win, while Kevin Brower collected his first save. The 21st-ranked Tar Heels improved to 27-14, 12-5 in the ACC. NC State falls to 25-16, 4-10 in league play.
Maples knocked a solo homer deep to left for the game's first run in the second inning, but NC State answered with a pair of runs in the third to pull ahead 2-1 and three more in the fourth for a 5-1 lead. UNC starter Garry Bakker, who was relieved by Harrell after just three innings, got into trouble in the third by hitting two batters, both of whom would later score in the inning on RBI singles by Mike Prochaska and Joe Gaetti. Harrell gave up a three-run homer to Justin Riley for the Wolfpack scoring in the fourth, but he settled down from there, allowing no hits over the next four innings before giving way to Brower for the final four outs of the game.
Trailing 5-1, the Tar Heels mounted their comeback with three runs in the bottom of the fourth. Russ Adams had a leadoff single and Maples hit his second homer of the game to pull within 5-3. Blake added a solo shot to deep center field one batter later to pull the Tar Heels to within a single run.
Carolina jumped on top 7-5 with three runs in the sixth, one on a leadoff homer by Jeremy Cleveland and two on a shot over the fence in right by Adam Greenberg, his second of the series and 12th of the season.
Carolina's home run parade continued into the seventh, when Farrell hit a leadoff shot to left, giving the Tar Heels an 8-5 cushion. An RBI single by Ron Braun capped the scoring in the inning and gave UNC its only run of the game not driven in by a homer.
Farrell added a two-run shot in the eighth inning and Maples followed with his third of the game and 17th of the season one batter later to provide UNC with the final 12-5 margin.
"The balls were certainly jumping out for us today," said UNC head coach Mike Fox. "We found a way to win, and it happened to be the long ball. They're holding us pretty close so we can't use our running game, but this team's resilient and we found another way to win. I never expect eight (home runs in a game), but I was proud of coming back after being down 5-1."
Maples, who had 11 three-hit games in his career entering Saturday's game, finished 4-for-5 with four RBIs and three runs scored. Today's effort was the sixth multiple home run game of his career and fifth this season. Farrell has hit two home runs in four different games of his career.
Carolina, which has not completed a three-game sweep of NC State since 1990, concludes its three-game series against the Wolfpack Sunday at 2 p.m.
