While North Carolina’s late-game heroics have been well chronicled, a reason for its success this season may be something different altogether.
This North Carolina baseball team has reached 30 wins faster than any UNC team since 1983 and, while the Tar Heels have scored a lot of runs, they’ve also kept their opponents from putting games out of reach.
“I think we’re a tough bunch. We play every pitch as hard as we can,” junior Levi Michael said. “Last year’s team may not have played the whole game. This year we really put teams away.”
North Carolina jumped on East Carolina early Tuesday night at Boshamer Stadium, taking a quick 1-0 lead in the first inning.
An early one-run lead may not seem so impressive, but it was significant for the Tar Heels as Tuesday’s game marked the first time in 12 games that UNC has scored before its opponent.
“It’s kind of been a trend for us lately, to get behind early, that first inning’s been a little rough for us,” Michael said. “Today, getting on the board first, definitely took some pressure off our pitching staff.”
But the team hasn’t struggled to score runs this season — UNC is the fifth-highest scoring team in the NCAA.
The Tar Heels scored runs at a high enough rate to overcome almost all of those early deficits, losing only two of those 11 contests.
UNC opponents have scored six or more runs in only eight games this season. Maybe more impressive is that of those games, the Tar Heels have lost just one.