The Tar Heels rally before coming up short at the end of Friday night’s marathon, and bow out of the tournament with a 9-5 loss in 12 innings.
Adam Smith
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — North Carolina couldn't crack the code on the significant task of solving Wake Forest ace Chase Burns again.
But the Tar Heels didn't stop coming and staged a rally to extend Friday night's game, before falling to the Demon Deacons 9-5 in a 12-inning classic at the ACC baseball tournament. The loss, with the tide turning back and forth and momentum shifting in pivotal moments, eliminated No. 1 seed UNC from the conference tournament.
The Tar Heels were just one strike away from securing a stirring victory in the ninth inning. Later, Wake Forest slugger Nick Kurtz, the 101st batter of this marathon that stretched on for more than 4½ hours, blasted a two-run homer off UNC reliever Ben Peterson to break open the 5-5 tie in the top of the 12th inning. By that late hour, with midnight approaching, Burns's overpowering 15-strikeout performance in front of the sellout crowd here at Truist Field had been rendered a footnote, as Kurtz proved to be another Carolina nemesis on this night.
"Nobody likes to lose and you're looking at somebody that hates it worse than a lot of people probably," UNC coach Scott Forbes said. "But sometimes, these things happen to set you up for future success, hopefully. Because you're going to be back in that same situation, and you can't win a title without beating a really good team with a potential first-rounder on the mound, and two or three first-rounders in the batter's box. You've got to make those pitches. So the great thing is, it's not the last game. You get a chance to learn from it and get ready for the NCAA Tournament."
The Tar Heels (42-13) lost for just the third time across their last 16 games, and won't be leaving Charlotte with the ACC Tournament crown, as they did two years ago in claiming the 2022 title. UNC figures to land among the top national seeds in the NCAA Tournament field. The Tar Heels rate fourth nationally in the RPI rankings behind only Texas A&M, Tennessee and Kentucky, per D1Baseball.
The win moved eighth-seeded Wake Forest (38-19) to the ACC Tournament's semifinal round, and a matchup against fifth-seeded Florida State on Saturday. Carolina became the latest of the highly seeded teams — along with No. 2 seed Clemson, No. 3 seed NC State and No. 4 seed Virginia — that failed to advance out of the pool-play portion of the format here. Sixth-seeded Duke and 11th-seeded Miami will meet in Saturday's second tournament semifinal.
UNC missed on a number of late scoring chances that could've denied the Demon Deacons on Friday night. The Tar Heels stranded 17 runners on the bases across the course of the long night, and left a combined six men on base during the final three innings. In the 10th, Wake Forest's Joshua Gunter got Parks Harber to fly out with two Carolina runners on. Then, the 11th emerged as emblematic of the unfinished opportunities. UNC loaded the bases with one out, but Gavin Gallaher grounded to Wake Forest shortstop Marek Houston, who cut down pinch-runner Carter French at home plate. The Tar Heels still had the bases loaded there, but Colby Wilkerson's groundout ended the inning.
Earlier, with two outs in the bottom of the eighth inning, UNC star Vance Honeycutt slammed a double off the wall to tie the game at 4-4. And after Casey Cook walked, Harber served a single that scored the speedy Honeycutt with the go-ahead run. In the top of the ninth, UNC was one strike away from victory. But Kurtz belted a two-out double on a full-count pitch from UNC reliever Matt Poston, scoring pinch-runner Cameron Nelson from first base to tie the score at 5-5, and eventually force extra innings.
"The game could have been over there," Forbes said. "Poston was hurling it in there at 97 (mph). He was trying to elevate and for sure not throw him a strike, and players make mistakes. And Poston sure was not trying to do that, it was an elevated fastball and give Kurtz credit. He got inside of it just enough. But we don't believe anything bleeds into anything. We have short memories. We talk about it all the time, flush it fast."
Houston, Adam Tellier and Cameron Gill homered early for Wake Forest, which moved ahead 2-0 in the top of the fourth inning, as the fireballing Burns, the ACC Pitcher of the Year, cruised along. Later, Carolina's deficit grew to 4-0 on the light-hitting Gill's two-run shot in the top of the seventh. But UNC finally broke through when Burns, college baseball's national strikeout leader, exited the game after six shutout innings. He threw 106 pitches, with 72 registering as strikes.
Anthony Donofrio and Luke Stevenson supplied run-scoring singles, pulling the Tar Heels within 4-3 as the game changed in the bottom of the seventh inning, before Wake Forest reliever Zach Johnston struck out Alex Madera to strand two runners and end Carolina's threat there. The Demon Deacons used nine pitchers out of the bullpen in relief of Burns.
During the regular season, the Tar Heels went on the road and swept Wake Forest in a three-game series at the end of March. And in the process, UNC became the only team to put a loss on Burns's otherwise perfect pitching record this season. He piled up 14 strikeouts and didn't issue a walk across 6 1/3 innings that night in Winston-Salem, N.C., but the Tar Heels tagged him for nine hits, including three homers, and won 6-5.
UNC couldn't generate that amount of success against him here on Friday night, chasing and missing on a number of swings. But the Tar Heels also were victimized by some atrocious called strikes from home plate umpire Adam Dowdy in other moments. Burns fanned Harber to end the fifth inning, marking Carolina's 15th out of game — and 13 of those were strikeouts delivered by the right-hander Burns. His electric stuff reached 100 mph as he mowed down Cook in the first inning, and still touched 98 mph in the sixth inning after having fired more than 100 pitches.
"He's good, no way around that," Honeycutt said of Burns. "We just knew to try to have some good at-bats, put some together and get his pitch count up a little bit. And then once we got him out of the game, just try to have some good at-bats after that. But I think that was kind of the name of it. Once that guy kind of gets out of the game, obviously a little bit more confidence. So just really trying to battle and plug each at-bat."
Honeycutt doubled twice and Stevenson produced three hits, but UNC didn't launch any homers a night after going deep six times while pounding Pittsburgh 12-2 to open pool play. Honeycutt, the first-team All-ACC selection who repeated as the league's Defensive Player of the Year, missed the defeat of Pitt on Thursday due to back spasms.
The Tar Heels turned to Dalton Pence, Matthew Matthijs, Poston, Peterson and Aidan Haugh, typically the No. 3 arm in their starting rotation, out of the bullpen on Friday night, after lefty starter Shea Sprague went 4 2/3 innings.
