After just one game, the dream of winning this year’s ACC Tournament went up in smoke for the top-seeded UNC baseball team, which was on the wrong end of a 5-4 upset Wednesday night in Durham at the hands of the No. 12 seed Pittsburgh Panthers.
The Tar Heels needed simply to defeat the Panthers to win Pool A and earn a spot in Saturday’s semifinals thanks to Pitt’s win over Georgia Tech–the other team in the group–on Tuesday.
Anything can happen in baseball, however, and that was certainly true Wednesday night, as Pitt scored two runs in the botttom of the seventh inning off UNC senior reliever Brett Daniels to turn a 4-3 deficit into a 5-4 lead.
UNC had yet to trail up to that point, leading for most of the night after RBIs from Kyle Datres and Ike Freeman in the first inning gave them an early 2-0 advantage.
By the third inning, the Panthers rallied to tie things up at 3-3–forcing the Tar Heels to abandon starter Cooper Criswell on the mound in favor of star reliever Josh Hiatt, who managed to escape the jam.
The Tar Heels tacked on another run in the fifth inning, but couldn’t muster anything else despite loading the bases with no outs.
That ultimately proved to be fatal as Pitt’s seventh-inning surge turned out to be more than enough to pull off the upset and earn the Panthers a berth in the semifinals–one that seemed to be UNC’s to lose.
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UNC will still have to play Georgia Tech on Friday to finish out the pool play schedule, but the outcome will have no impact on the rest of the tournament. First pitch for that game is set for 3 p.m.
Photo via UNC Athletics
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