May 25, 2008

By Adam Lucas

JACKSONVILLE--Between now and 12:30 on Monday, when the NCAA Tournament field of 64 is announced and everyone completely forgets about anything that happened prior to May 26, the Carolina bullpen will be the topic of much discussion.

That's only natural. After all, the Tar Heels headed south for the ACC Tournament with a 41-1 record when leading after eight innings...and promptly coughed up two ninth-inning leads on the way to a 1-2 Tournament finish that included losses to Virginia and Miami.

"Those last three outs in any game, especially in this tournament, are the hardest ones to get," Mike Fox said after Saturday's 9-6 loss to Florida State.

Those are valid concerns, and the Carolina coaches will certainly spend time working with senior righty Rob Wooten, who happened to be on the mound of both of those ninth innings.

"I feel for Rob," Fox said. "He's been the guy for us the last couple years. He strikes out the leadoff man, but he's been living on the edge. Maybe he makes a little bit of an arm angle change and arm extension out front. We opened the door for them, and there's a small margin of error."

Fox meant that Wooten had been working behind hitters, which was true. On Wednesday it was a leadoff ninth-inning walk that began Virginia's comeback, and the same was true on Saturday, as a one-out free pass to .240-hitting Parker Brunelle, the ninth man in the Seminole order, started a six-run ninth.

But it might be worth examining exactly why the lead Wooten was protecting was so narrow. As Wooten himself said at the beginning of the 2008 season, the last three outs of the game have a special cachet. Sometimes, though, it's the first 24 outs that set up the final three.

Against FSU, for example, Carolina plated a single run in both the first and second inning. But that was only after loading the bases with no outs in the first and having a runner picked off first to end the second with a man on third. The Tar Heels would also load the bases in the sixth...and again get just one run. Then they loaded them again with no outs in the eighth...and again got just one run when Jack Rye made a good throw on a shallow fly ball by Kyle Shelton to cut down Seth Williams at the plate.

That's three bases-loaded chances and just three runs. For the evening, the Tar Heels stranded 13 runners, and a staggering nine of them were in scoring position. Against the Cavaliers, Carolina had the winning run in scoring position in both the ninth and eleventh innings but couldn't convert.

The clutch hitting gene hasn't suddenly departed the UNC bats. There are too many good hitters in the order, one through nine, for that to happen. But it did appear that the Tar Heels, a team that came to Jacksonville with very little to gain, might have been without the edge they'll need--and will have--in NCAA Tournament play.

Nowhere was that more evident than on defense. The Tar Heels made two costly errors against UVA and another pair against FSU. The only errorless game they played was, not coincidentally, Matt Harvey's 2-0 gem against Wake Forest.

"I told them on the bus before the game that I didn't really care (whether we were eliminated)," Mike Fox said after the win over the Deacons, which took place after UNC was already eliminated from title contention. "We talk all the time about how when the game starts, there's only one way to play the game, and that's as hard as we possibly can. We have no control over the other games so I expect us to play as hard and as well as we can. We played as hard as we could, although maybe not exceptionally well."

And that's the story of the weekend. The Tar Heels didn't play exceptionally well in any of the three ACC Tournament games. Not just over the final three outs, but over the entire course of three games. Some of those early fumbles were the reason why it was close enough for FSU and Virginia to make the comebacks that everyone noticed.

So if the Tar Heels didn't play exceptionally well, does that mean they're not an exceptionally good team?

No. It just means that practice this week will be spent not just honing the bullpen. It will also be devoted to repolishing the edge that makes Carolina an exceptionally good team--not just for the final three outs, but for the 24 outs that precede them as well.

Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly. He is also the author or co-author of four books on Carolina basketball.