University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: Familiar Ground
June 24, 2007 | Baseball
June 24, 2007
By Adam Lucas
OMAHA--For the first time in nearly a week and just the third time in the last seven games, Carolina didn't face elimination Saturday night against Oregon State.
They'll be back in the familiar spot Sunday after an 11-4 defeat that looked eerily similar to last Sunday's 14-4 loss to Rice. It was brutally simple for the Tar Heels in the first game of the College World Series finals: they didn't play well enough to win a national championship in any part of the game.
"We were beaten by a much better team tonight," Mike Fox said. "They played better than we did in every phase of the game. I thought their hitters looked a little more locked in than ours did."
The Beavers did make two uncharacteristic fielding errors plus a bad baserunning play by the embattled Mike Lissman. But that was a mere trifle compared to the difficulties that plagued the Tar Heels.
Carolina didn't pitch especially well. The four relievers that entered the game between Alex White's decent start and Mike Facchinei's two-inning, one-run outing to close the game threw 43 pitches, went a combined two-thirds of an inning, gave up five runs and walked four.
Carolina didn't hit especially well. They went 1-for-10 with runners in scoring position and continued a disturbing Omaha trend by being unable to score leadoff runners in the first, second, fourth, and sixth innings. Oregon State, meanwhile, scored a combined five runs in the three innings in which they earned a leadoff base runner.
"That's probably pretty typical of how Oregon State won a lot of games lately," Fox said. "They got some big hits, moved the ball with runners on base, and stayed inside the ball. When we made mistakes pitching-wise they made us pay for it."
The Tar Heels went deep into the bullpen to find the pitchers to make those pitches. With Andrew Carignan and Rob Wooten having been heavily worked in Omaha, Carolina turned to Rob Catapano, Tyler Trice, Matt Cox, and Facchinei in relief of Matt Danford.
Say this for North Carolina: they want to win a national championship. But they have absolutely refused, for two straight years, to do it at the expense of the health of their pitchers. Other programs, including some here in Omaha, can't say the same.
Could Carignan or Wooten have gotten a key out or two when the game was still in doubt? Probably. Did they want to? Certainly. Was it the best move for their future?
No, and that's why they remained chained to the bench.
Catapano got what seemed like a big out in the bottom of the sixth when he retired Jordan Lennerton to hold the deficit at a manageable 6-2. But the Carolina offense missed another chance in the top of the seventh, loading the bases with just one out. This was exactly the spot where so many Tar Heel postseason rallies have started.
Instead, the lone run came across on a Tim Fedroff sacrifice fly. Down 6-3 with just two more trips to the plate remaining, the decision was made to rest Carignan, Wooten, and Tim Federowicz unless the Tar Heels pulled off another rally.
"Those guys have pitched a lot out here," Fox said. "When we got behind we felt like it wasn't the best move to go to those guys. Maybe the day off for all three of those guys, including Timmy, will help us. We tried to mix and match and we just didn't get the job done."
In many ways, playing Oregon State is very similar to playing another Carolina nemesis, Virginia. The Cavaliers have taken four of the last seven games in that series by playing a very similar style to the Beavers: clawing, scratching, limiting fielding mistakes, and taking advantage of the big blow when it's presented to them. The Tar Heels did things you simply can't do against a team built that way--squandering scoring chances, making the occasional mistake pitch, and committing a pair of fielding errors--and suffered the consequences.
That type of play resulted in Oregon State being one win from a national championship. Carolina, meanwhile, is back on familiar ground during this 2007 season: facing elimination, needing to bounce back off the canvas one more time to force a deciding third game.
Adam Lucas's third book on Carolina basketball, The Best Game Ever, chronicles the 1957 national championship season and is available now. His previous books include Going Home Again, focusing on Roy Williams's return to Carolina, and Led By Their Dreams, a collaboration with Steve Kirschner and Matt Bowers on the 2005 championship team.
