After being swept for the first time all season last weekend at Miami, the North Carolina baseball team bounced back with a sweep of their own in Charlottesville.
“It was a good weekend for us,” coach Mike Fox said. “It’s a little bit different than last weekend. We pretty much moved past last weekend pretty quickly and got it done this weekend, and it hadn’t been done up here since 2003 — so we feel pretty good about it.”
The No. 9 Tar Heels kicked off the series with No. 23Virginia with a nail-biting extra inning affair on Friday night. Sophomore ace Kent Emanuel tossed eight strong innings, giving up just three hits and a single run. He retired the first nine batters he faced and didn’t allow a hit until the fifth frame.
But R.C. Orlan picked up the win in relief as he came on in the ninth inning and struck out two of the three batters he faced.
Jacob Stallings delivered the go-ahead run with a solo home run to left field in the top of the 10th, giving the Tar Heels the 2-1 advantage. Closer Michael Morin took care of the rest tallying his ninth save of the season.
“We played a lot better in all phases of the game (compared to last weekend),” Fox said. “We got some timely hits, and we got a great start from Kent Emanuel Friday night. He pitched into the eighth inning and saved our bullpen, and we needed our bullpen Saturday and Sunday.”
Orlan answered the call again on Saturday after Chris Munnelly lasted just two innings as the starter. Orlan picked up his second win of the series with 2.2 innings of relief. The win makes his record 7-0 on the season with all of those decisions coming in relief.
The Tar Heel bullpen played an essential role in the 6-2 victory and kept Virginia off the board despite allowing a lot of base runners.
“All those guys did a great job and just kept us in the game; it allowed us to scratch and claw a little bit. “Every inning they had runners on and we were pitching out of the stretch and we had to make some big pitches but we did and of course we had Michael in there to close.”
