University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: Moments In Time
June 20, 2011 | Baseball, Featured Writers, Adam Lucas
June 20, 2011
By Adam Lucas
OMAHA, Neb.--You can go an entire lifetime in college baseball and not see it once. Even with the nation's best pitchers assembling every June in Omaha, you may not see a pitcher thwart the nation's best hitters for nine innings, shutting out one of the country's best teams and single-handedly pitching his team to a victory.
Mike Fox has now seen it twice in five years. Monday, he watched as freshman Kent Emanuel twirled a four-hitter against Texas--a program that is essentially the Carolina Basketball equivalent of college baseball in terms of long-term success and postseason domination--to give the Tar Heels a 3-0 win. Exactly five years and one day ago, he watched Robert Woodard fire a three-hitter at national top seed Clemson to earn Carolina a 2-0 win.
Which one was better? Well, which of your kids do you love more? What's more pleasant in Chapel Hill, spring or fall? Dustin Ackley or Alex White?
These two games are instantly linked in Carolina baseball history, making it all the more unusual because Woodard was on hand as a Tar Heel assistant coach for Emanuel's gem. A comparison:
The line score
Emanuel gave up four hits and walked one. He threw 126 pitches.
Woodard allowed three hits and walked three. He threw 129 pitches.
The biggest jam
Against Emanuel, one Texas runner reached second base--Mark Payton with one out in the fourth inning. He was promptly erased by the second of two double plays from the outfield, this one from Seth Baldwin to Levi Michael. That's the only runner the Longhorns had in scoring position all day.
Against Woodard, Clemson put runners on second and third with two outs in the fifth inning. A groundball to third base ended the threat.
How they did it
Catcher Jacob Stallings on Emanuel: "His curveball and changeup command were what set this performance apart. He usually commands his fastball and throws it wherever he wants to. It seemed like they were on his fastball, especially with two strikes. We went to more breaking balls and offspeed pitches and that really had them off balance."
Texas coach Augie Garrido on Emanuel: "It was a brilliantly pitched game by their pitcher. He got three pitches over and used them in different counts."
Woodard after his win over Clemson: "I wanted to pound the strike zone and be aggressive. My job was to focus on the sink of my ball. If I was going to miss, I wanted to miss below the knees. Every single pitch I told myself that."
Tigers head coach Jack Leggett used the word "frustrating" three times in his postgame press conference to refer to Woodard's success against his club.
Woodard on Emanuel: "In the ninth inning, I remembered that freshness I had in the ninth inning. I remember that feeling that I was sprinting to the finish line. It didn't matter how tired I was or who was hitting. I was just going right at hitters. I saw that with Kent in the ninth."
The common thread
Pitching coach Scott Forbes called every pitch of Emanuel's shutout. Emanuel shook off just two or three pitches.
Pitching coach Scott Forbes called every pitch of Woodard's shutout. Woodard said he never shook at all.
Maybe hauling around all those DVD's of opponent at-bats and the endless hours hunched over the laptop watching video does pay off.
The aftermath
Right now, Emanuel has no idea what he has done. He has no idea that for five years, Woodard's game has been the standard by which all Carolina pitching performances are judged, that it's the game every other Tar Heel start must compete against. A start might be good, sure, but was it Woodard-against-Clemson good? That's the bar.
Now, the freshman--yes, he's only a freshman, and he'll be here for at least two years--is holding the other end of that bar. "Kent would be the first one to tell you Robert Woodard has helped him," Fox said.
Woodard would have none of it. "I can't take any credit for his success whatsoever," he said after Monday's win. "He's about as cruise control a pitcher, much less a freshman pitcher, as you'll ever see. Since day one in the classroom and on the field, cruise control is the word that comes to mind."
There's some immediate business to worry about--on Wednesday, the Tar Heels will have to face the loser of the Vanderbilt-Florida game. That's the short-term. Down the road, though, when we're struggling to remember what other teams were with Carolina in Omaha in 2011, we'll be talking about Emanuel, and--even if he doesn't know it now--he'll be remembering less about specific pitches and more about individual moments.
"After the game, I saw Kent's mom right behind the dugout, and I saw them share a moment," Woodard said. "That was pretty cool. I remember how special that was for my family. That's a moment just for Kent. He did that in front of his family and he'll have that for the rest of his life. You can't describe to people how much that moment will mean to you."
Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly. He is also the author or co-author of six books on Carolina basketball, including the official chronicle of the first 100 years of Tar Heel hoops, A Century of Excellence, which is available now. Get real-time UNC sports updates from the THM staff on Twitter.
