UNC baseball to take on Yellow Jackets

On Wednesday night, West Virginia did what hadn't been done before.

The Mountaineers traveled to Chapel Hill and dealt the North Carolina baseball team its first midweek loss of the season.

Now, No. 12 UNC is looking to get back on track with a series win against Georgia Tech — potentially the first weekend victory against the Yellow Jackets in four years.

"We definitely owe them from last year," said UNC ace Trent Thornton Thursday. "We went down there and got beat in the series 2-1 so that’s definitely us playing with a chip on our shoulder."

In addition to the recent success against the Tar Heels, Georgia Tech has won six of its past seven games and is one of the top hitting teams in the ACC.

"You know they’re a pretty good offensive team," Thornton said. "So our pitching’s going to have to be really good this weekend."

Georgia Tech should provide a solid UNC pitching staff with its biggest challenge of the season. The Yellow Jackets are a top-three ACC team in batting average (.294) and slugging percentage (.418) in addition to leading the conference in hits (210), doubles (49), triples (8) and total bases (299).

With Georgia Tech's ability to put the ball in play at such a high rate, a young UNC team is going to need a quick turnaround from a Wednesday game where defensive errors proved costly. 

"That’s my biggest concern — all the mistakes that we made," coach Mike Fox said after the team's four-error loss to WVU. "Defense not making plays, not making throws."

Left fielder Parks Jordan said the biggest issue against the Mountaineers was the mental errors that the team experienced.

"We can make all those plays," he said. "Physical errors are gonna happen, but miscommunication — that shouldn’t happen. That’s something we can control."

If Georgia Tech is given the same additional opportunites to score runs, they will be able to take advantage. 

"You gotta try to help yourself stay in the game by playing defense and pitching," Fox said.

To the Tar Heels' advantage, they will be able to counter Georgia Tech's prolific offense with a pitching staff that is one of the best in the conference. North Carolina's 2.43 ERA is the second-best in the ACC, and they have given up the fewest doubles, triples and homeruns in the league.

But Thornton and the rest of the pitching staff know that this is probably their biggest challenge of the season so far. That, and the opportunity to move past a disappointing WVU loss has them eager for 5 p.m. Friday.

"It’s definitely important for us to get some momentum early in the game tomorrow and use that to our advantage," Thornton said. "(Wednesday) night was a very tough loss and we learned a little bit about our team and what we need to improve on."

"So we’re definitely really focused on shutting them out, putting up runs and taking it to ‘em."

sports@dailytarheel.com