University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: Unearned Runs Costly In Opener
May 13, 2006 | Baseball
May 13, 2006
By Adam Lucas
CHARLOTTESVILLE--As Carolina prepared to face Virginia in this weekend's three-game showdown, it was pretty simple:
The Tar Heels couldn't make errors.
And the Tar Heels had to play station-to-station baseball to create one run at a time against the Atlantic Coast Conference's stingiest pitching staff.
Neither happened, and that's why the Cavaliers took a 4-1 win in the opening game of the series.
Virginia picked up an unearned run in the second and another unearned run in the fourth. Carolina has now allowed four unearned runs in the past two games, both of which--not coincidentally--are losses.
"There are going to be changes tomorrow," head coach Mike Fox said. "There have to be."
Fox had already juggled the lineup against lefty Sean Doolittle, inserting Chad Flack in the cleanup spot for the first time since March 26. That swap gave the Tar Heels three formidable righthanded hitters in the 4/5/6 slots in the batting order--Flack, Benji Johnson, and Tim Federowicz--but Doolittle held the trio to 1-for-12.
They weren't the only ones struggling against the sophomore two-way star. He gave up just four hits, all singles, in 6.2 innings of work and allowed just one runner past second base.
"He's really good," Fox said. "He kept us off balance and then in the middle of the game he tired a little bit and started using his breaking ball."
"I had good command of my slider," Doolittle said. "I was able to use it on some 1-0 counts to even it up."
Doolittle was good--he helped set the tone for a night in which 35 Tar Heel batters came to the plate and 26 saw first-pitch strikes--but he was backed up by a solid defense that snuffed every Carolina threat. The Cavaliers turned a snappy 6-4-3 double play in the fifth inning and Greg Miclat made a run-saving backhand stop of Mike Cavasinni's hot two-out grounder in the seventh to preserve the Virginia lead. For most of the night, the Wahoos simply looked like the more confident team, and their play in the field was the perfect illustration.
Now there's precious little time for Fox to make those promised changes before Saturday's 1 p.m. start. Some of them will be obvious--Robert Woodard will go to the mound in place of Andrew Miller, who never looked at ease on the Davenport Field mound, and it will be Federowicz's turn behind the plate in place of Johnson, who will move to designated hitter. With a righthanded starter, Jacob Thompson, expected for Virginia, the Tar Heels are also likely to work in some of their lefthanded bats. Cavasinni continues to look more comfortable at the plate and could be an option in the outfield, as could Matt Spencer, who went 1-for-1 in limited duty on Friday.
The biggest changes, though, will have to be fundamental. In some ways, all Friday night did was verify what the Tar Heels already knew. Coughing up two unearned runs won't work against the Cavaliers, and neither will batting 1-for-14 with runners on base.
Clemson won Friday night to take a one-game lead in the race for best record in the ACC, and Virginia closed Carolina's lead to one game in the Coastal Division.
Now, however, those races are secondary. Friday's loss snapped a 10-game conference winning streak.
Starting a new streak will begin with defense.
"I told the team after the ball game that what won that ball game was that final column on the scoreboard--the errors," Virginia coach Brian O'Connor said. "They had two and we didn't have any."
Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly and can be reached at alucas@tarheelmonthly.com. He is the coauthor of the official book of the 2005 championship season, Led By Their Dreams, and his book on Roy Williams's first season at Carolina, Going Home Again, is now available in bookstores. To subscribe to Tar Heel Monthly or learn more about Going Home Again, click here.
