CHAPEL HILL, N.C. -- Normally, it wouldn’t be considered a big deal for the No. 2 team in the country to lose a series opener to the No. 7 team in the country. North Carolina (46-6, 20-5 ACC) dropped a 10-4 decision at home to Virginia (43-8, 20-7), and the Cavaliers outplayed the Tar Heels in nearly every aspect of the game.
Back when North Carolina got out to a 39-2 start to the season, head coach Mike Fox warned that a bad stretch was coming. It’s baseball. It’s inevitable. The Tar Heels had yet to hit the toughest portion of their schedule at that point in the year, and now they’ve faced four of the top 20-30 teams in the country over the past 3 1/2 weeks.
They posted a 2-5 record in those games.
Don’t tell Fox that his team is in a slide, though.
“Oh, we’ve lost three out of five? Oh. See, I’m focusing on the fact that we’re 46-7,” Fox said with a grin. “We weren’t going to continue just to win games at this clip, no matter what. Do we want it to be right now? No. Had I rather it been in February or March? Yeah, but it’s not. We do have our backs against the wall a little bit, so we’ll see how much fight we have.”
North Carolina is a near lock for a national seed, but its recent “slide” — in addition to Virginia winning 11 of its last 12 games — means that the Tar Heels have to win at least one of the three games at home to get the top seed in the upcoming ACC Tournament.
Starting pitcher Kent Emanuel, who had an uncharacteristically shaky outing, didn’t even know that was on the line.
“I didn’t even know that that was the case, to be honest with you,” Emanuel said. “So cool, maybe we’ll come out and win tomorrow and we’ll get (the top seed), right?”
UNC’s top hitter Colin Moran also said that he had a vague idea, but he didn’t know for sure.
Fox isn’t the type to over-emphasize the importance of a regular-season game. He wants his team to value each game equally and go out and give their best no matter what. He didn’t dangle the prospect of earning the top seed over them before the game, but he assumed they already knew.
“I haven’t told them, but ... I can’t imagine they don’t know that, but maybe it’s — I started to say maybe it’s good they don’t, but maybe I should go in there and tell them,” Fox said with a laugh. “I just rethought that. Maybe I should go tell them that!”
Fox, Emanuel and Moran have all been through the ups and downs of seasons that haven’t gone quite as well as this one has.
Emanuel and Moran in particular have been on teams that have gotten bad breaks, either with injuries or losing streaks or all of the above.
This iteration of the Tar Heels has been blessed with a combination of talent and good fortune. It’s a fairly veteran squad, though, and even though this team has won quite a bit, they still remember what losing feels like.
“It might be (weird) for the younger guys, but the guys that have been here last year and the year before, this has been the most...kind of coasting of a season that we’ve had since I’ve been here,” Emanuel said. “So we expected it and it sucks obviously now that it’s hitting us, but we’ve always been a team that’s responded well and I expect this year’s team to be the same way.”
“It’s a long season. We knew we were going to - we were on a roll for awhile, eventually we’re going to lose some games,” Moran said. “We’re coming into the most important part of the season, hopefully we’ll get on a roll and get things going. We had a couple losses. It happens. It’s not too big a deal.”
In the next four days, North Carolina will face Virginia two more times and then on Monday, it will close the regular season out with a home game (non-conference) against No. 8 Florida State. That will make seven top-10 opponents for North Carolina in its last 15 games. If that doesn’t prepare the Tar Heels for the postseason, nothing will.
But there’s still business to take care of in this series. Win one of the next two games against the Cavaliers, which will both be at home, and North Carolina wins the Division and gets the top seed in the ACC Tournament. Fox is confident that his team will be ready.
“We’ve been in this situation before where we lost on an opening night (of a series) against Miami, and we came back,” Fox said. “Are we equipped? Yes. We’ve got some guys in that locker room that are tough and are leaders and don’t like to lose.
“You want those guys to keep your team from crumbling. That’s one of the things we ask our leaders to do. We’re going to face adversity, so don’t let the team crumble. We’re not standing on the ledge, ready to jump off quite yet.”
