The North Carolina baseball team has been nothing short of impressive this season. After a stellar 18-3 record through 21 games this season, UNC climbed to No. 13 in the official NCAA rankings and proved to be one of the top teams in college baseball.
While there is still much to celebrate about this team, UNC has reached a pivotal point in their season after a winless weekend series against the red-hot Miami Hurricanes.
Miami — a team that has now won eight of its last 10 matchups — stunned the Tar Heels Sunday by completing the series sweep in Coral Gables, Fla.
North Carolina showed a lot of fight in its losing efforts, but it wasn’t enough to overcome the mistakes made in the three games.
In UNC’s first game against Miami, the Tar Heels were uncharacteristically down big late in the game. While the Tar Heels started an impressive run in the last two innings after being down seven, their comeback fell short in the end.
In game two, UNC was starting to look a lot more solid early on, yet fell apart late in the game, conceding five straight unanswered runs to the Hurricanes and losing by a score of three runs to seven.
UNC sought to avoid the sweep in game three yet lost a 14-inning marathon to a walk-off single by Miami’s Renzo Gonzalez.
Early on in this series, it was clear North Carolina was not playing to the level it had been playing earlier in the season.
Starting pitcher Brandon Schaeffer gave up six hits and three runs in over two innings of work, bringing his seasonal ERA to 4.18. In the second game, pitcher Kyle Mott allowed four runs in just two innings.
