DURHAM, N.C. — North Carolina will have to wait to lock up the top seed for the approaching ACC baseball tournament.
The Tar Heels fell to Duke 5-3 in the opener of the teams' final regular-season series on Thursday night here at Coombs Field. UNC arrived needing a victory against the rival Blue Devils or a loss by Clemson to Boston College in order to clinch the No. 1 seed assignment for next week's conference tournament, and got neither.
Alex Stone's run-scoring double down the left-field line off Carolina reliever Matthew Matthijs put the Blue Devils ahead to stay in the bottom of the seventh inning, as the Tar Heels' six-game winning streak ran out against the weight of the mostly overpowering pitching delivered by Duke starter Kyle Johnson and reliever Charlie Beilenson. UNC got home runs from Luke Stevenson and Parks Harber, but managed just four hits in total.
The freshman lefty Johnson spun four perfect innings to begin the night. He didn't allow Carolina (39-12 overall, 20-8 ACC) to put a runner on base until the fifth innings and did't give up a hit until the sixth inning, a juncture by which the Blue Devils led 2-0. Later, Beilenson entered and worked three scoreless innings to stifle UNC, after the Tar Heels pulled even at 3-3 in the top of the seventh. Beilenson struck out six of the 11 UNC batters he faced, effectively picking up where Johnson left off with eight strikeouts through his six innings.
"Gotta give credit to Duke, I thought they played really well," UNC coach Scott Forbes said. "When you walk one and you punch out 14, you usually win that game. At least we do, when we're pitching like that and making plays.
"We didn't make some plays that we normally make. We didn't strike them out as much and we walked them more, and (still) we're right there. We came back. That tells you what type of team we have. Our guys were battling. Sometimes you don't play great, but you're still in the game, and that was the case tonight. We just didn't come out on top. You've got to give Duke credit. They got it done and we didn't."
The Tar Heels, coming off a three-game sweep of Louisville during which they belted 12 homers and piled up 36 runs at Boshamer Stadium in Chapel Hill, N.C., dropped to 2-6 away from their home park since early April.
Carolina didn't produce a hit off Johnson until the top of the sixth inning and trailed by deficits of 2-0 and 3-1, before rallying to tie it 3-3 in the top the seventh. Harber launched a solo shot to lead off that inning, his 19th homer of the season, and Anthony Donofrio followed with a single that the Tar Heels used to manufacture another run. Alex Madera singled and Gavin Gallaher's sacrifice fly scored Donofrio from third base.
Stevenson's homer to open the sixth inning finally provided Carolina with a breakthrough to crack the code on Johnson, the blue-chip freshman who pitched superbly while operating in a new spot in the rotation. Duke lost ace Jonathan Santucci to a rib injury last week, so Johnson took the ball Thursday night and promptly dominated out of the gate.
He twirled a no-hitter across the game's first five innings. He mowed down four of the first eight UNC batters he faced, and had six strikeouts through 12 batters. In his start last week at Georgia Tech, Johnson didn't make it past the second inning while getting knocked around by the Yellow Jackets.
"He had three," Forbes said, referring to the pitches working for Johnson here on Thursday night. "I thought he was as good as we've faced all year — 92-95 (mph fastball), throwing the breaking ball to lefties, throwing the changeup to righties. Working at a really good pace. Ultra-athletic."
Johnson quickly fanned UNC star Vance Honeycutt on three pitches in the top of the first inning to get the game underway. Honeycutt struck out three times on the night. In the bottom of the first, Logan Bravo's two-out single put Duke ahead 1-0. Bravo blasted a solo homer off Carolina starter Jason Decaro in the sixth inning, giving the Blue Devils a 3-1 lead.
Decaro, the freshman right-hander, went 5 1/3 innings. He struck out four while giving up six hits, two walks and two earned runs. Fielding errors hurt both Decaro and Matthijs. The Tar Heels were charged with three errors on the night. Two pf them occurred during Duke's half of the second inning. Donofrio's error in right field allowed the Blue Devils' Devin Obee to take third after doubling. Two batters latter, Johnson's bouncing ball got through the UNC third baseman Gallaher, who attempted to make a backhand stab there.
"Gavin was trying to go home on that play, the backhand," Forbes said. "It would've been a tough play. … You've got to make plays. In games like this especially, when they're pitching it like that and all of a sudden you come back, you've got to grab every out that you can. I also thought we made some really good plays, they just made more plays than we did."
Matthijs (11-4) took the pitching decision for the Tar Heels. Forbes said Decaro had trouble locating his fastball on both sides of the plate. But he said Decaro battled, and remarked "that's two potential first-round picks" of the freshman starters Johnson and Decaro. "I've been coaching a while," Forbes said. "They look the part." Beilenson (6-2), Duke's stopper out of the bullpen with 11 saves on the season, picked up the pitching victory.
The Blue Devils entered Thursday night having gone 6-6 across their last 12 games, while Carolina arrived 10-1 over its last 11 games. The Tar Heels had defeated Duke in nine of the previous 12 games between these teams. This rivalry series is being played at 93-year-old Coombs Field on Duke's campus for the first time since 2014, rather than the spacious Durham Bulls Athletic Park.
