Cavaliers hold off Tar Heels 6-2 in ACC baseball
Most of the fireworks North Carolina supplied came in the postgame show that caps every Friday night ACC baseball game at Boshamer Stadium.
Virginia junior left-hander Brandon Waddell threw seven shutout innings against the Tar Heels as the Cavaliers claimed a 6-2 victory and clinched a berth in next week’s ACC tournament at Durham Bulls Athletic Park.
It wasn’t all bad news for the Tar Heels, however. They got some help down the road in Durham, where Duke beat Wake Forest 7-0 and allowed UNC to also claim a berth in the ACC tournament.
UVa (32-19, 14-15 ACC) and UNC (32-21, 13-15) currently stand seventh and eighth in the ACC standings with one regular-season game left. They will play at noon Saturday in the series finale.
Waddell, making his most effective start of the season, scattered seven hits and four walks, helped by three double plays. He struck out six as UVa claimed the season series from the Tar Heels for the third straight year.
UNC freshman right-hander J.B. Bukauskas, the first of six UNC pitchers, lasted only 11/3 innings, his shortest start of the season, and yielded five runs, four earned. In the first he walked Daniel Pinero with one out, gave up a sharp single to right to Matt Thaiss that sent Pinero to third, and fell behind Kenny Towns to prompt a visit to the mound by pitching coach Scott Forbes.
Towns then lined an RBI double to left center for his team-leading 49th RBI, and a wild pitch brought home a second run. Pavin Smith made it 3-0 for the Cavaliers with a long sacrifice fly to left.
Bukauskas didn’t survive the trouble in the second. Joe McCarthy led off with a single to right and came around to score when Ernie Clement sliced an opposite-field single down the line and right fielder Tyler Ramirez let it get past him for a two-base error. Adam Haseley followed with an RBI single to right that made it 5-0 and chased Bukauskas.
Trevor Kelley relieved for UNC and threw 22/3 innings of two-hit relief. Hansen Butler took over to begin the fifth and surrendered a run when Jack Gerstenmaier slapped a two-out RBI single to right, scoring Towns, who led off the inning with a single and moved up on two infield outs. But UNC third baseman Zack Gahagan saved at least one run and possibly two when he made a diving backhand grab of Clement’s hot shot down the line and threw him out.
UNC threatened against Waddell in the second when a throwing error by the shortstop Pinero and a walk put the first two batters on base. Brian Miller fouled out to third, and Logan Warmoth grounded into a force play before Joe Dudek walked to load the bases, but Waddell struck out Gahagan to escape unscathed.
Waddell stranded two runners each in the third and in the fifth. UNC ended an 0-for-18 streak with runners on base in the series when Alex Raburn and Landon Lassiter delivered two-out back-to-back singles in the fifth, but Waddell struck out cleanup hitter Skye Bolt to end the threat.
UNC finally got on the scoreboard in the eighth against Virginia reliever Josh Sborz on a two-run double down the third-base line by Warmoth, following a one-out single by Korey Dunbar and a walk to Eli Sutherland.
This story was originally published May 15, 2015 at 10:20 PM with the headline "Cavaliers hold off Tar Heels 6-2 in ACC baseball."