On a sun-splashed Saturday afternoon the 3-0, sixth ranked, Tar Heel baseball team hammered the Seton Hall Pirates (0-3) 10-4 in Game 1 of their doubleheader, followed by a 9-5 win in the second leg that completed a clean sweep of the series for UNC.
Early on in the first inning of the opener, it appeared that the Pirates would grab the momentum after first baseman Sal Annunziata’s two out double off of Benton Moss gave Seton Hall a 1-0 lead.
Although falling behind in the beginning of games was the Achilles Heel for the Tar Heels last year, that was certainly not the case on this day.
The offense immediately wrestled the lead away as soon as they got their chance in the bottom of the first, with catcher Adrian Chacon’s RBI single and an error by Seton Hall third baseman Kyle Grimm immediately handing the Tar Heels a 2-1 lead.
There was a bit of a scare in the top of the third inning, when Tar Heel starter Benton Moss inadvertently hit Pirate center-fielder Derek Jenkins in the face with a hard fastball.
“When you hit somebody in the face, that gets a little unsettling, just the way he got up, and then kind of buckled and fell was a little weird, but I think he’s doing okay, just had to get some stitches,” Moss says.
Jenkins would leave the game after spending a minute writhing in pain on the ground, and was replaced by Jackson Martin. However, Jenkins suffered no serious injuries, and was only kept out of Game 2 as a precaution.
The floodgates were opened up in the bottom half of the third as the Heels batted all the way through the order and scored seven runs on a flurry of base-hits and sacrifice plays. Skye Bolt’s sacrifice fly capped off the inning and left UNC with a 9-1 lead after three, ending the day for Pirate left-handed starter Anthony Elia.
It was a perfect example of what this team can look like running on all cylinders, as Adrian Chacon described the run by saying that “We were locked in, got a couple hits here and there, and we were able to scrap off a couple runs, and then once we got going again we were able to push off a few more.”
Skye Bolt showed extreme patience at the plate with two nine-pitch walks in Game 1. (UNC Athletics)
Moss came out dealing in mid-season form, striking out nine hitters on 88 pitches, while giving up just two earned runs in five innings of work.
From then on, it was smooth sailing for the Tar Heels in Game 1, as they rode the bullpen arms of Hunter Williams, Trevor Kelley, Brett Daniels, and Nick Raquet to close things out.
Logan Warmoth (2-4) and Adrian Chacon (3-4) led the balanced offensive attack, with each picking up two RBI in the day’s opener.
In Game 2, UNC again fell behind 1-0 in the first inning, on an unearned run, after Seton Hall lead off man Zack Weigel reached base on a throwing error by Tar Heel second baseman Alex Raburn, made it to 2nd on a base hit by Chris Chiaradio, stole 3rd, and finally scored on a ground out by Sal Annunziata.
Pitching stole center stage in the second act of the afternoon, with another Pirate lefty, Anthony Pacillo quieting the Tar Heel offense for the first three innings, before Joe Dudek’s double in the fourth drove in Adrian Chacon and Logan Warmoth, both of whom continued to impress.
Freshman JB Bukauskas brought the heat in Game 2. (UNC Athletics)
Highly touted freshman JB Bukauskas showed fans why he’s received so much hype in the offseason, and why he earned a start in his first career college series, as he immediately unleashed fireballs on Seton Hall hitters that topped out at 97 miles per hour on the radar gun.
Bukauskas admitted he was nervous after allowing the first two hitters he faced to reach base, but says “I kind of hit a groove and settled in. I felt like the nerves kind of left me. It was just another game at that point.”
Any initial jitters he had quickly disappeared, as the freshman allowed no earned runs, only four hits in five innings, and earned all five of his strikeouts by making batters swing and miss, on the way to picking up the victory in his debut.
Coach Mike Fox had nothing but high praise for his young prodigy, saying that “it couldn’t have been scripted out any (more) perfect to get him five innings and eighty-something pitches. We weren’t going to let him throw over 90, so we didn’t see any reason to put him out there in the sixth inning. He just had a little tough luck there in the first.”
Once the sun began to go down, the bats woke up and went back to work for the Tar Heels. Tyler Ramirez’s single to right field with the bases loaded in the bottom of the fifth plated Korey Dunbar and Wood Myers, and gave UNC some breathing room. Over the next two innings, Landon Lassiter singled home Korey Dunbar, and Joe Dudek added another RBI to his tally for the game, making it 6-1 in favor of the Tar Heels.
The scoring continued all the way through the eighth with UNC tacking on three more, just to be safe.
Relievers Zac Gallen and Chris McCue combined to retire each batter they faced in the three innings they pitched (2 for Gallen, 1 for McCue) after coming in the game for Bukauskus following the fifth frame. Closer Reilly Hovis came on to pitch the ninth with the game out of reach, however he looked shaky in his first appearance of the year, allowing four runs before finally shutting the door with back-to-back strikeouts.
The two wins on the day improved Carolina’s all-time record against Seton Hall to 58-11.
Fourth-ranked UCLA is next on the docket for the Tar Heels, as the Bruins make the cross-country trip from Los Angeles to Chapel Hill for a three game series beginning on Friday, February 20th.
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