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CHAPEL HILL, N.C. -- Baseball at UNC under head coach Mike Fox has been a veritable machine that churns out success, seemingly. Twelve straight NCAA Tournament appearances, and trips to the College World Series in six of the last nine seasons.
That's no longer the case this season as the Tar Heels (29-20, 13-12 ACC) have shown that their success shouldn't be taken for granted, and none of it has been easy.
Nothing is coming easily for UNC right now, as the Tar Heels lost their 20th game this season -- just the second 20-loss season for the program in the last 10 years.
Carolina fell 7-0 to No. 4 Florida State (38-11, 18-7 ACC) in the first game of a critical ACC series, the final home series for the Tar Heels, and will now have to win the final two games to take it.
Florida State clinched the Atlantic Division title, and the Seminoles just continue to roll. But North Carolina will have to scratch and claw just to make the ACC Tournament.
With five of their final six games in the regular season coming against top-5 teams (UNC is at Miami next weekend), the Tar Heels are running out of time.
And the way the team is pressing certainly shows, as seemingly nothing is going right.
Staff ace Trent Thornton threw just 5.0 innings (his fewest this season) and 91 pitches (also his fewest this year), taking his second loss in the last three starts to fall to 7-3.
He's also allowed eight earned runs in his last three starts after allowing 11 in his first nine starts. A lot of that is due to better competition, but it was clear Thornton was frustrated with both himself (he hit two batters) and the lack of run support.
"I thought I gave the team a chance to win, but we didn't score any runs so it's kind of hard to win a game when you don't score any runs," Thornton said. "As a pitcher, giving up runs especially early in the game is kind of difficult because we haven't been the best offensive team this year. Our offense has definitely given us chances to win, but we just didn't get it done pitching and hitting today."
And perhaps the most frustrating part of Thornton's night came in the top of the second inning. An out away from getting out of the frame still tied at 0-0 -- a strike away, in fact -- Thornton threw a pitch that catcher Korey Dunbar seemed to think he had in his glove. He didn't, and two runs scored on the play.
Dunbar was pulled right after that by head coach Mike Fox.
"You've got to run after the ball. It cost us a run," Fox said. "You'd better run after the ball -- simple as that."
Still, the sheer weirdness of it all was almost too much.
"It's like, really, did that just really happen? All we're trying to do is just waste that pitch with two strikes, just try to climb the ladder, see if he'll chase one and then we're going to go back and throw the next pitch, which we struck him out on," Fox said.
"It's like we just climb the ladder too high, we don't find it and there you go. But that wasn't the end-all of the game. We still had plenty of opportunities left. They beat us. They just beat us soundly."
UNC had actually been getting some momentum after a disappointing start to the season, winning 14 of their last 21 games after starting the season 15-12.
But just like in the game against Florida State -- just like in a lot of their games, seemingly -- the Tar Heels can't seem to generate and keep momentum going.
The second-inning mistake -- a combination of bad luck and lack of hustle -- erased any good the Tar Heels had done in the first, getting two on and looking crisp against FSU's Luke Weaver (7-3). But the Tar Heels wouldn't advance a runner past first base the rest of the game.
"When you get behind against a good team that's not going to open the door for you, basically --they don't walk you very much and they make plays -- then you've got to create some opportunities," Fox said.
"You've got to get some base hits. You've got to hit balls hard enough to try to find a hole or get a little lucky and bloop one in every now and then. ... The key with Florida State is, you go back and look at the runs they scored -- hit batter in the second, hit batter in the fourth, walk in the seventh -- they come up and get base hits. That's what good teams do."
This program has a lot of talent on the roster still, although injuries and youth have contributed to the Tar Heels' "slide" back into baseball mortality this season.
Senior Parks Jordan knows that he has to keep the younger players feeling good about themselves, but that it's easier said than done.
"We've just got to go out every day and play like it's the lsat game and win every game we can. That's the type of attitude you've got to have when you're at this point in the season," Jordan said. "I think that's the attitude of the majority of our team -- don't put any extra pressure of yourself, just go out there and try to win each game one at a time.
"It's definitely easier said than done, especially with younger guys on the team. You have to learn that comes with experience, just trusting in yourself and staying with the process. But at the same time, I think our younger guys are maturing and starting to understand that."
Sophomore Landon Lassiter is one of those younger guys. He knows that pressing only leads to playing worse in baseball.
But he also knows that the team can't lose that confidence. Because all it takes is a streak here or a big win there to get momentum building, and all of a sudden a team is "hot". It's tough to stop a hot baseball team, particularly headed into the postseason.
So for him, it's not tough to find confidence. The program's history is more than enough to give it to them, he says -- or it should be.
"We just say we're North Carolina baseball. We have a great tradition here. We've just got to keep playing hard," Lassiter said. "A couple years back, Fresno State went into the NCAA Tournament with a similar record as us and they just got hot on a roll. Hopefully we can just click it together and it starts tomorrow with a win tomorrow."
