University of North Carolina Athletics
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Carolina Baseball Completes Sweep With 18-9 Rout Of Duke
May 13, 2002 | Baseball
May 13, 2002
DURHAM - North Carolina completed a three-game baseball sweep of Duke with an 18-9 win on a hot and windy Monday afternoon at Jack Coombs Field. After posting 8-3 and 19-10 wins in the first two games of the series, the sixth-ranked Tar Heels cruised to their fourth sweep in the last five years against the Blue Devils (21-30, 3-18) and their 13th win in their last 14 games of 2002.
With its seventh straight win, Carolina improves to 38-15, 16-5 in the ACC. Only the 1990 Tar Heels, the last UNC team to win an ACC title at 17-4 in the league, posted more conference wins in one season. Meanwhile, Carolina enters the final weekend of the season tied with Clemson for first place in the ACC, percentage points ahead of 15-5 Wake Forest.
"It was a tough day and I'm really proud of our team for the way they played," said UNC head coach Mike Fox, who moved within four wins of his 700th career college coaching victory. "I thought we played hard in some tough conditions to play in. We kept the ball in the ballpark today, which is a real credit to our pitchers with the wind blowing out 25 miles per hour."
The Tar Heels scored in all but the fifth and ninth innings and tallied 20 hits en route to the lopsided win. All 12 Tar Heels who made a plate appearance registered at least one hit in the game. Chase Younts, Jeremy Cleveland, Chris Iannetta and Russ Adams all homered for Carolina, which has 92 home runs as a team this year, three shy of the single-season school record of 95 set in 1986.
With one run in the first, four in the second, two in the third and one more in the fourth, UNC held a 8-3 advantage heading into sixth inning before a five-run inning gave the Tar Heels a 10-run lead, 13-3. Ryan Blake drove in a pair of runs with a two-out, pinch hit double and Ron Braun added a two-out single up the middle to highlight Carolina's sixth inning.
Duke answered with three runs in the bottom of the sixth, but a two-run double by Chad Prosser and a two-run homer by Russ Adams extended the UNC lead to 18-6 and capped the scoring for Carolina on the afternoon. Duke added three late runs for the final 18-9 margin.
Daniel Moore (4-1) allowed four earned runs on eight hits while striking out four for the win, while Duke starter Zach Schreiber (1-3) took the loss after being tagged for 13 runs on 14 hits over 5.2 innings.
"It was a good three days for us, we put ourselves in a good position at 16-5 in the league," Fox said. "We'll see what happens at Georgia Tech, but we're in a position where we can create our own destiny."
Carolina travels to Atlanta for its final ACC series of the season against the Yellow Jackets next weekend.
Carolina's win gave the Tar Heels the final three points of the annual Carlyle Cup competition between UNC and Duke. Carolina won this year's title, 31-17.
