North Carolina upset by Davidson in opening regional game

This wasn’t how North Carolina baseball’s return to the NCAA Tournament was expected to start.

After disappointing campaigns in 2015 and 2016 that resulted in the Tar Heels missing the postseason, this year’s group returned to form, resembling the teams of Tar Heel past that went on to achieve great things.

The 47 wins, the 10 ACC series victories in as many tries and the No. 2 national seed said as much.

But when the Davidson hits keep coming and the pockets of away fans in the crowd continue to cheer as run after run comes in while the rest of Boshamer Stadium remains quiet, those moments of success don’t seem to matter as much.

Postseason play does not reward teams for what they’ve already done. Rather, it tells them to produce now. And on Friday, Davidson was simply better than UNC for much of the evening.

Even with their ace, J.B. Bukauskas, on the mound, the Tar Heels fell, 8-4, to a Wildcat team that had to win the Atlantic 10 conference tournament a week ago to secure their first NCAA Tournament appearance in program history.

Now, it’ll be UNC (47-13, 23-7), a program with 10 College World Series appearances and a current squad many find talented enough to reach Omaha, playing against Michigan to keep its season alive on Saturday.

Meanwhile, Davidson and Florida Gulf Coast – two teams which had never previously participated in the NCAA Tournament – will play against each other with the winner of that contest sliding into the driver’s seat to make it out of the Chapel Hill Regional.

Against Davidson, the Tar Heels were out-executed in nearly every facet of the game. Even though UNC made a late comeback attempt by scoring four runs in the sixth and seventh innings thanks to an RBI single by Zack Gahagan and home runs from Logan Warmoth and Brandon Riley, it couldn’t overcome the miscues that caused itself to go down by eight runs in the first place.

“They outplayed us just from pretty much the first pitch to the last and deserved the win,” head coach Mike Fox said. “We’ll regroup.”

Bukauskas, expected to be one of the first few college pitchers selected in the upcoming MLB Draft, struggled with his command and was chased early, lasting only 3.2 innings and giving up a season-high six earned runs.

UNC’s hitters, meanwhile, were held in check for a good while by Davidson’s workhorse pitcher Durin O’Linger, who already has his sights set on pharmacy school after this season and only plans on playing baseball for as long as his team’s postseason run allows him to.

Prior to the game, both teams claimed their prior meeting with each other – a come-from-behind 7-6 10-inning win for the Tar Heels on May 9 – would help with preparation for Friday’s matchup.

UNC knew it couldn’t afford to overlook the No. 4 seed in its regional, while Davidson entered with a sense of self-belief, knowing it more than held its own a few weeks back at Boshamer Stadium.

Regardless of whether or not that game made for a substantive advantage or disadvantage for either club, the Wildcats looked the more relaxed bunch.

They were solid in the field, patient at the plate and their hot start – four of their runs came in the second and third innings – helped them get acclimated to the atmosphere.

Contrarily, UNC struggled to put together meaningful at-bats against O’Linger for much of the night and aided the Davidson offense with four walks and a balk.

“It’s disappointing. They hit us in the mouth early and we just couldn’t recover,” UNC’s Brian Miller said. “We don’t like playing from behind, but we’ve come back before. We just couldn’t string it together.”

Of course, the regional round’s double-elimination format allows for a loss like this.

Granted, the Tar Heels are in a much tougher situation than they would’ve been with a win on Friday night.

To advance past this weekend, UNC must win four straight games in three days, a task made even more daunting by the fact that Bukauskas was already used against Davidson, throwing 88 pitches.

But if there’s a team that could be up for a challenge of that nature, this season’s Tar Heels might be it.

Despite the hole it finds itself in, Fox’s team has had winning streaks of at least four games on five different occasions this season.

“You get two losses,” Miller said. “We still feel we’re the best team in this regional. We’ve played well all year. We just didn’t have it tonight. Hats off to them, but we’re definitely not out.”

In a way typical of a coach, Fox said UNC only has to win one game before it can worry about winning three more.

For that to happen, the Tar Heels will likely need a good outing against the Wolverines from first-year pitcher Gianluca Dalatri, who’s been one of several young players to step up for UNC this season.

Otherwise, the group that got UNC back to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2014 might see its impressive season come to a sudden end.

@brennan_doherty

sports@dailytarheel.com