The Omaha rain drops fell hard onto the North Carolina baseball team as reality set in late Wednesday night. The season was over.
After stressing a theme of enjoying the moment entering the College World Series, and starting the tournament with a bang in an 8-6 win over Oregon State, the clock ran out much quicker than the team could have anticipated.
In two straight games, the Tar Heels lost all control of the game in the last innings with chances to win both games — as they gave up 16 runs combined in the eighth and ninth innings of Tuesday and Wednesday. To close out the 2018 campaign, Oregon State got its revenge in an 11-6 win — the game that mattered the most — the elimination game.
Four days before Wednesday’s first pitch, the Tar Heels overcame the Beavers' starter Luke Heimlich and team by launching a five-run third inning into a sustained steamroll. The team knocked out Heimlich in the third inning of that game and recovered from a first inning exit from their own starter, Gianluca Dalatri, with the bullpen picking up the pieces the rest of the way.
With the orange and black in the opposing dugout again and Heimlich taking the mound for the second time against them this week, it all looked like it did the last time. The blueprint was there. The familiarity was too. But this one turned out different.
In the top of the first inning, Oregon State jumped out to a 2-0 lead, taking Cooper Criswell deep on two home runs to deep left center field. In the third, the team scored another, but North Carolina quickly knotted it all up after working a couple of hits and an error to its advantage on the base path to erase all the damage of the start.
Suddenly it was a brand new ballgame, not only with a chance for the Tar Heels to get back into it, but also to take a lead. And they did in the bottom of the fifth inning on a single from short stop Ike Freeman, who had two hits on the day.
The team then didn't soon look to give up that run lead. The following inning, third baseman Kyle Datres willed a ball fair, clanking a deep fly off the foul pole for a two-run homer for a 6-3 lead. With three innings to go, Mike Fox’s team was in command.
On defense, first-year Caden O’Brien had been dealing from the mound, striking out five batters and giving up just one hit. He was setting up that edge from the bullpen the team had in its best performances of the season, the kind of play that allowed the team to beat its opponent the last time.
