Chapel Hill: Post Game Notes
By Kenny Cook - June 01, 2007
UNC won the second game of the Chapel Hill Regional, 6-0 over Jacksonville. Robert Woodard went 8 innings and gave up 7 hits and no runs, while tossing 123 pitches. He picked up his 10th win of the season, and is now 33-5 for his career. This was the third straight year he has started the first game of a regional, and was reminiscent of last year's College World Series, when he pitched a complete game shutout against Clemson. Rob Wooten closed out the game by striking out 3 Dolphins in the top of the ninth to preserve the win.
In the post-game press conference, Jacksonville Coach Terry Alexander was very gracious in the loss, praising UNC starter Woodard for his masterful performance. He talked about how UNC was extremely confident and how his team allowed them to be too comfortable by escaping numerous jams. He felt that although his team had 8 hits, they were not timely hits and thus they had a lot of rallies fall short.
JU second baseman Logan James, a childhood friend of Woodard, was also effusive in his praise of the pitcher and his performance. He mentioned that he and the UNC hurler got together for dinner this week and that their families had met up as well.
UNC Coach Mike Fox was nearly as complimentary in his praise of Jacksonville pitcher, Matt Davis. Although he was only making his 5th start of the season, Davis pitched well in all but one inning. If you ignore the second inning when UNC scored 3 runs on 4 hits (and I'm sure Jacksonville would like to be able to), Davis allowed only 1 run and 4 hits in the other five innings.
Catcher Tim Federowicz, the game's hitting star (3 for 4, 2 RBI, 2 doubles) noted that Woodard only missed his spots a couple of times the whole night and was able to battle out of a lot of jams. Most notable was the sixth inning, when Jacksonville got its first two batters on base but could do no further damage. That inning ended when Matt Lopez was called out looking at a third strike.
North Carolina will face in-state rival East Carolina in the winner's bracket game tomorrow. Freshman Alex White (6-4, 3.35 in 14 starts) will pitch for UNC, while Dustin Sasser (5-4, 3.44 in 16 starts) will try to put the Pirates in control.
Posted by Kenny Cook at 09:22 PM on June 01, 2007
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