Virginia Tech baseball's pitching falters in dropping rubber match to North Carolina

After splitting their first two games with 12th-ranked North Carolina, the Virginia Tech baseball team was looking to pull out a series win after an emotional first two games. The Tar Heels won the opener on Friday night, 9-6, and the Hokies bounced back and hit five home runs on Saturday afternoon to post a 10-6 victory.

There were some fireworks between the two teams throughout the game on Saturday which resulted in four ejections, three for Virginia Tech and one for UNC. For the Hokies, Jared Davis and Hudson Lutterman were ejected along with head coach John Szefc. For the Tar Heels, Scott Forbes was thrown out in the eighth inning as well. All of that set up a must-watch on Easter Sunday afternoon in the rubber match.

After the Hokies jumped out to an early 2-0 lead, North Carolina scored seven unanswered runs before the Hokies added two before falling to close out the series. Virginia Tech fell to 25-15 overall and 10-11 in the ACC before hitting the road.

Virginia Tech grabbed the game's first two runs in the third inning when Henry Cooke had an RBI double and Ben Watson followed with an RBI single. However, in the game of baseball, a shutdown inning is huge in the next half inning, and the Tar Heels answered with a run. That sharted a stretch of scoring in four straight innings with one the fifith, one in the sixth for a 3-2 lead and they broke the game open with four runs in the seventh.

David McCann had a two-run home run in the bottom of the eighth to cut the deficit to 7-4, but the Hokies would get no closer and drop their second consecutive ACC series after being swept by Florida State last weekend.

The Hokies hit the road for a mid-week game on Tuesday night at VCU before a three-game series next weekend at Duke. Virginia Tech needs to start picking up some wins if they want to get to the NCAA Tournament later this season.