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CHAPEL HILL — North Carolina baseball went deep to open the NCAA Tournament on Friday afternoon.
The Tar Heels hit five home runs, two of them belted by Mac Horvath, and pounded Hofstra 15-4 in the first game of the Chapel Hill Regional at Boshamer Stadium.
Vance Honeycutt provided a three-run blast and Tomas Frick and Danny Serretti added solo homers as UNC, the No. 10 overall seed in the NCAA field, kept streaking with its eighth straight victory. North Carolina improved to 16-2 across its last 18 games.
The Tar Heels (39-19) will meet VCU at 7 p.m. Saturday, while Hofstra (30-22) will face Georgia in an elimination game at 1 p.m. Saturday.
UNC right-hander Max Carlson pitched into the sixth inning and picked up his third win of the postseason, all of them coming on four days of rest. Carlson (4-2) threw 108 pitches after weathering a bout of early unsteadiness, when Kevin Bruggeman and Santino Rosso homered to give Hofstra leads of 1-0 and 2-1.
Hofstra, making its first NCAA Tournament appearance in program history, earned its spot in this regional after sweeping through the CAA Tournament with four wins in a row coming during its final at-bat.
North Carolina’s bullpen didn’t allow such a rally to materialize here. Gage Gillian, Connor Bovair and Connor Ollio cleaned up in relief of Carlson.
North Carolina’s Mac Horvath hit two home runs as the Tar Heels pounded Hofstra on Friday to open the Chapel Hill Regional in the NCAA Tournament.
Times-News
Photo courtesy of the ACC
Horvath drove in four runs. His second home run, a two-run shot crushed off Hofstra starter Brad Camarda, gave the Tar Heels their first lead at 4-2 in the third inning. That marked Horvath’s 18th homer of the season. He jerked a long foul ball in the bottom of the first inning, then took Camarda deep to left-center field on the next pitch.
Serretti’s solo shot in the fifth inning moved UNC ahead 6-2. North Carolina piled up seven runs in the seventh to break open what had been a 6-3 lead. Honeycutt’s line-drive, three-run homer capped the outburst and the Tar Heels were cruising, up 13-3.
Honeycutt, the ACC Tournament MVP, has supplied 12 home runs and 28 RBI in the last 16 games.
Adam Smith is a sports reporter for the Burlington Times-News and USA TODAY Network. You can reach him by email at asmith@thetimesnews.com or @adam_smithTN on Twitter.
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