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Heels clinch berth
UNC wins 14-4 to roll into CWS
AP Photo
North Carolina players celebrate advancing to the College World Series for the third year in a row.
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Published: June 9, 2008
CARY - North Carolina rocked Coastal Carolina early behind a barrage of hits and stormed to the Cary Super Regional title yesterday afternoon to notch its third consecutive berth in the College World Series.
UNC captured a 14-4 win at the USA Baseball National Training Complex in a game that it had under control by the second inning after forging a 6-0 lead. UNC built a 12-0 advantage against its shell-shocked opponent and eight of the runs came with two outs.
Rob Wooten, a right-handed relief pitcher who helped close the decision with two innings of work, said that the UNC players wanted to return to Omaha, Neb., the site of the College World Series, after finishing as the national runner-up the last two seasons.
"It never gets old," Wooten said. "We worked so hard for this all year long. We're very fortunate to get back but we've got some unfinished business to take care of."
Dustin Ackley, a sophomore first baseman from Walnut Cove, and Tim Federowicz led a 17-hit attack that forced Coach Gary Gilmore of Coastal Carolina to reach into his bullpen in the third inning.
Ackley and Federowicz each had three hits in five at-bats and each drove in three runs. Ackley started the two-out scoring in the second inning when he lashed a line-drive single to right that drove home Chad Flack and Garrett Gore to give UNC a 3-0 lead.
"You saw Dustin Ackley at his best today," Coach Mike Fox of UNC said. "He's something special. You saw it the last couple of days. That kid is absolutely unreal."
UNC improved to 51-12 by going unbeaten in five regional games dating back to last week. UNC became only the second ACC team to reach the College World Series three consecutive seasons. Florida State turned the trick twice, first in the 1994-1996 seasons and again in the 1998-2000 seasons.
Coastal Carolina ended its season 50-14. It lost two consecutive games for the first time since March 18 and 19, a run of 45 games. Gilmore said the better team won.
"Are we disappointed? Absolutely," Gilmore said. "We didn't come here to be happy to be here. We came here to try to win. We simply weren't good enough."
UNC once again made Coastal Carolina pay for its mistakes. The lead was 1-0 with one out when Fox called for a double steal with runners on first and second. Scott Woodward, a freshman third baseman, caught the throw from catcher Dock Doyle on the left side of the bag near the foul line but dropped the ball.
Had Woodward held onto the ball he would have had ample time to reach over and tag out Flack for the second out. Instead both runners were safe, with Gore taking second. Ryan Graepel, the UNC batter, then grounded out to shortstop for the second out.
Ackley followed with his hit to build the lead to 3-0. Kyle Shelton reached base on a soft liner to right field to move Ackley to second. Tim Fedroff followed with a hard line drive that rolled to the wall in left-center for a double that drove in Ackley and Shelton for a 5-0 lead.
Federowicz smacked a double off the left-field wall, driving in Fedroff for the inning's final run. UNC had six hits in the inning against Nick McCully, Coastal Carolina's starting pitcher.
"I made a couple of good pitches that they hit and they capitalized even more on a couple of bad pitches I made," McCully said. "It seemed that everything I threw up there they were hitting."
The six-run lead was a significant zone of comfort for Adam Warren, UNC's starting pitcher. Warren had control problems but was generally smooth and effective for six innings in keeping Coastal Carolina off the bases. Warren didn't give up a hit until the fifth inning and that happened when Kyle Seager, UNC's second baseman, lost sight of a fly ball in the sun and it fell behind him in short right field.
The 12-0 lead came in the sixth inning. Coastal Carolina took advantage of shaky middle relief pitching to score all of its runs in the seventh inning, but its hole was too deep to crawl out of and Wooten was near masterful in mixing fastballs and breaking pitches.
Fox thought that taking the 6-0 lead helped demoralize Coastal Carolina.
"Whenever you're in an elimination game -- and we've been in a few of those -- you don't want to get behind," Fox said. "It just puts that much more pressure on you. Every pitch and every swing is just that much more critical.
"We were aggressive that inning running the bases. Obviously we got some good pitches to hit and hit some line drives, which we've learned to do in this ball park. You're not going to hit many home runs here. We know (that)."
■ Bill Cole can be reached at bcole@wsjournal.com.
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