No. 1 Tar Heels split doubleheader with Clemson

At 25-2, the No. 1 North Carolina baseball team sometimes looks like it has the game all figured out.

But after clinching the series against Clemson with a 6-2 win in the opening-game of Monday’s doubleheader, it was the fundamentals that led to UNC’s second loss of the season in the finale Monday night — a 5-4 Clemson win in 11 innings.

“We didn’t play well enough in the second game in all phases of the game,” UNC coach Mike Fox said.

In UNC’s afternoon win, pitcher Trent Thornton pitched 6 1/3 innings — the remainder of a game that had been started Sunday night halted by rain — allowing two unearned runs and six hits.

Warning signs flared up, though, with UNC committing four errors.

“Some were mental, some were physical,” first baseman Cody Stubbs said of the errors. “We pride on our defense and it’s not something that usually happens with us, but we’ll get right back on track with that.”

In the finale, a Colin Moran opposite-field bomb gave UNC a 2-0 lead in the third inning, and the Tar Heels took a 3-2 lead in the fifth.

But the trouble started in the sixth inning, when Clemson’s Thomas Brittle blooped a single in front of freshman Skye Bolt with the bases loaded. Bolt threw the ball toward third base, allowing a second run to score on the play, which tied the game 3-3.

It was exactly the type of inning Fox tells his team to avoid — what he calls the ‘big inning.’ Fox added that the team that has the big inning usually takes the game.

Clemson would take its first lead of the series when UNC relief pitcher Trevor Kelley threw a wild pitch, scoring Tyler Krieger for a 4-3 Clemson lead.

UNC answered in the seventh when Moran tied the game hard-hit groundout to the pitcher, which scored Chaz Frank.

That would be UNC’s last run of the series, as Clemson reliever Scott Firth shut the Tar Heels down for the next 4 2/3 innings.

In the 11th inning, when a leadoff walk and two bunt singles loaded the bases for the Tigers with no outs, catcher Garrett Boulware sent the eventual winning run across the plate with a groundout.

“That really changed the momentum,” said relief pitcher Chris O’Brien, who took the loss. “We did a good job trying to battle through it and just didn’t come out on top this time.”

With two runners on base in the bottom of the inning, freshman Landon Lassiter fouled out on a bunt attempt. Firth retired Moran and Bolt and the Tar Heels went to the clubhouse on the losing end for just the second time this season.

“Two very simple things — we don’t throw the ball to the right base and we don’t get the bunt down,” Fox said. “They just happened to be our freshmen that have been in the lineup. That’s part of it, it’s a learning process … two very simple things can lose you games.”

Contact the desk editor at sports@dailytarheel.com.