No. 17 Tar Heels Fall To UNCG, 5-3

Tuesday, April 28

Chapel Hill, N.C.

6:00 PM

North Carolina

UNCG

April 29, 2015 | Baseball

By: UNC Athletic Communications

CHAPEL HILL --- UNCG scored four times in the third inning and held on for a 5-3 win over No. 17 North Carolina Tuesday evening at Boshamer Stadium. The Spartans, led by three hits from Jake Kusz, out-hit Carolina 14-7 and snapped the Tar Heels' six-game winning streak. Alex Raburn doubled and homered to lead UNC, which is off for final exams until May 5.

The key moment of the game came in the third, when Trevor Kelley appeared to have escaped a two-on, one-out jam. After striking out Collin Woody, Kelley got Eric Kalbfleish to ground softly for what seemed like the third out. But Kalbfleish was ruled to have made contact with Korey Dunbar's mitt and was awarded first base on catcher's interference. UNCG (20-20) then strung together three consecutive RBI singles to score four times and take a 4-0 lead.

That proved to be sufficient support for UNCG's Michael Bates (1-3), who allowed just one run on five hits over 5.1 innings in his most effective start of the year.

Carolina (29-16) rallied against the Spartan bullpen in the eighth, but Julian Abreu worked out of a bases-loaded, nobody-out situation to keep the Tar Heels at bay. After a Zack Gahagan RBI single off Blair Betts, Keaton Haack came in and walked Adam Pate and Landon Lassiter to force in a run. Abreu then struck out Tyler Ramirez before getting Dunbar to ground into a double play to end the seventh.

Collin Woody worked a scoreless ninth for his first save of the year. Trent Thornton pitched the last 2.1 innings for Carolina and struck out four.

The Tar Heels will be off this weekend during final exams and will return to Boshamer Stadium May 5
to host UNC Asheville.