The Diamond Heels scored 24 runs across two games against VCU in Chapel Hill on Tuesday and Wednesday. Ten runs did the trick in a 10-4 win on Tuesday, and Carolina topped itself on Wednesday in a 14-10 win. UNC hit eight home runs across the two days of action.

In the first game, it was the usual suspects raking at the dish. Vance Honeycutt, Mac Horvath, Alberto Osuna and Tomas Frick all went deep against the Rams, with Frick bashing two home runs to give him three in the team’s last two games. Frick and Osuna went back-to-back in the bottom of the second to open the scoring, and then Frick blew the game open the very next inning with a three-run blast. Honeycutt went deep in the fourth and Horvath in the sixth, offering an answer to a VCU rally which had cut the lead to 6-4 in the top of the fifth. The trio of Honeycutt, Horvath and Frick combined to bat 6-13 with nine RBI and five runs scored.

The second game featured another bomb from Honeycutt, but it was Tacoma Community College transfer Jackson Van De Brake who stole the show with a pair of homers in a 3-4, five-RBI performance. Van De Brake hit just one home run in his two seasons in Tacoma, but already has four for Carolina in its first nine games. Horvath didn’t go deep, but batted 3-6 out of the No. 2 spot and scored two runs. He leads the team with a .415 batting average on the young season. Honeycutt, himself hitting .310, went 1-5 and has recorded at least one hit in all nine games this season, the longest hitting streak in the star sophomore’s career. All of those hits were needed, as the Rams bashed 11 hits off Carolina pitching and the UNC defense committed four errors. It wasn’t the prettiest game to be played at Boshamer Stadium, but the midweek series did get the Diamond Heels back in the win column after two tough defeats to East Carolina last weekend.

UNC will be back in action on Friday for the first game of a three-game series with Stony Brook at 4 p.m. in Chapel Hill.

 

Featured image via UNC Baseball on Twitter


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