Top seeds Miami, Louisville in early control of ACC tournament

DURHAM, N.C. -- The top two seeds in the ACC tournament don't usually have much to gain by winning it. They're fighting for a national seed, yes, but Louisville (43-14) and Miami (43-13) don't have to win the event to secure that. Or even win Game 1.

Yet both Miami and Louisville, the No. 1 seed in their respective pools, didn't get to where they are by falling into bad habits.

And when their opponents left the door open, they waltzed right through.

Virginia, winners of six in a row, has been playing better and better. They wanted to keep that positive momentum going, and improve their own positioning in the NCAA tournament.

When the Cavaliers went up 3-2 in the top of the sixth on a three-run home run, it looked like that's what would happen. It especially looked like that when Virginia added two runs to that lead in the top of the eighth. But Miami head coach Jim Morris rallied his team before the bottom of the eighth; his team had looked dead and lifeless since the Virginia home run in the sixth.

"After he hit that three run homer, the pitch went dead, like we couldn't score runs dead," Morris said. "We've been averaging nine runs or something like that over the last month and I just reminded them of that in that situation: 'Hey, we've scored a lot of runs, we're not beaten yet'."

Morris was right.

A single and a walk got the Hurricanes two men on with one out. A single scored a run. Then a Virginia error scored one more run, opening the floodgates as Miami's best player David Thompson strode to the plate and knocked in two more runs. Miami would finish the inning with seven runs on four hits and went up 9-5, which would be the final.

"Coach Morris brought us together right before the inning started and told us we can score some runs here, we've just got to stay confident, stay positive and have some fun. That's what we did."

That's what good teams do -- they take advantage of mistakes, and they turn one mistake into many, and those mistakes into runs.

North Carolina (33-23) and Louisville have had very different seasons, and the difference has been in the way each team has taken advantage of -- or not taken advantage of -- said miscues. "You can see why Louisville was the best team in our league this year," North Carolina head coach Mike Fox said afterwards.

The Tar Heels kept their hopes of a postseason berth alive with a win in the play-in game over Virginia Tech on Tuesday. But they faced a Louisville team on Wednesday night that didn't get to 25-5 in the ACC by accident.

The Cardinals started freshman Sean Leland, who had only ever started three games before (but had 17 appearances). He allowed a home run to North Carolina's Tyler Ramirez on the first at-bat of the game to get down 1-0, then loaded the bases with no outs. A strikeout, a fly out and a pop out later, and North Carolina got out of that inning still up just 1-0.

The Tar Heels left five on base through the first two innings and would ultimately strand nine base runners; they still built a 4-0 lead through the first three innings, but those missed opportunities hurt.

"We needed to score more runs," Fox said. "Obviously you can't ever have enough runs, especially against a good lineup. ... We missed an incredible opportunity in the first two innings.

"That somewhat has been the tale of our season, where we had a chance to go up 2-3 runs there early -- and we did have a big inning, but we could have had more than one, and I think you have to in order to beat a team like Louisville."

Senior righty Benton Moss gave the Tar Heels a great start, retiring nine of the first 10 Louisville batters he faced.

That one hit, though, came from Louisville freshman Brendan McKay, who might just be the best freshman in the country as a two-way player. He went 4-for-4 against the Tar Heel pitching staff and 3-for-3 against Moss -- three of the five hits Moss allowed the whole game.

McKay got the Cardinals on the board with a two-run RBI in the fourth -- the second hit Moss had allowed to that point, and both to McKay.

"I have to give it to McKay -- he pretty much had my number all night, unfortunately," Moss said.

McKay got the team going again in the sixth, down just 4-3, when he led off the inning with a double. Then Carolina dropped a relatively routine ground ball that would have been the second out of the inning, still leading 4-3, and that scored McKay, who tied it instead with just one out. Louisville would score three more runs that inning as it opened the floodgates, and Moss was pulled after the error (which wasn't his).

One error compounded on another for the Tar Heels, it felt like, and Louisville bounded its way eagerly through the door that the Tar Heels left open.

As Fox alluded to, that's been the story of their season -- and yet Moss feels his team is still right there.

"It's baseball," Moss said. "I felt like our team was right there, really right there. If three or four things in the game we could change, it would be different.

"But it's baseball."