UNC baseball falls to Clemson in ACC Tournament semifinal, awaits NCAA tournament fate

North Carolina baseball players and coaches will try to forget what happened Saturday afternoon at soggy Durham Bulls Athletic Park.

The Tar Heels hope they have better things ahead.

A 10-4 loss to Clemson in the Atlantic Coast Conference Tournament semifinal means there won’t be a repeat of the league tournament title.

“It’s easy to flush it this time of the year,” coach Scott Forbes said.

The Tar Heels (35-22) will learn their NCAA Tournament destination Monday, but unlike last year they’ll be heading on the road to begin this next phase of the season.

“We make no bones about it, we want to win the ACC Tournament,” Forbes said. “But no team’s ultimate goal is to win the ACC Tournament. Every team’s ultimate goal is to win the NCAA Tournament, and we’re going to have a chance to do that.”

Clemson (42-17) won its 15th consecutive game and will take on Miami, a 7-2 winner against top-seeded Wake Forest in the other semifinal played at Boshamer Stadium in Chapel Hill, in Sunday afternoon’s title game at DBAP.

North Carolina swept N.C. State in its final three home games of the regular season, but has gone just 2-5 since then.

Still, Forbes said winning the first two games of the ACC Tournament provided a well-timed boost.

“For our guys to regroup when they got back (from a four-game road trip) and to make a run in this tournament, it’s a tough group,” Forbes said. “It’s a resilient group. It’s a group that I believe in and I believe they can make some big-time noise in the NCAA Tournament.”

Some of that might hinge on the status of center fielder Vance Honeycutt, a hitting standout and ACC Defensive Player of the Year. He has missed the past seven games with a lower-body injury.

“Vance is going to want to play,” Forbes said. “We’ll see where he is. There’s always hope. It’s just a little bit of a waiting game.”

The Tar Heels went through eight pitchers Saturday, with starter Connor Bovair (4-4) pulled after eight batters and five Clemson runs without completing the first inning.

“You get behind against a team that is that hot, you’ve got your work cut out for you,” Forbes said.

It got so bad for the Tar Heels that in the third, Clemson’s Cam Cannarella tripled with one out. Then Cooper Ingle came up lame when fouling a ball off his knee before slicing a single through a drawn-in infield, hobbling to first base and then exiting to the roaring approval of Tigers fans.

The Tar Heels stood in the rain and watched.

UNC’s bid to repeat as tournament champion fizzled. The Tar Heels won two of the three previous editions (with the 2020 tournament cancelled). Duke won the 2021 tournament.

So not only has a three-tournament stretch of an in-state tournament champions ended, there won’t even be a Triangle team in the title game for the first time since 2018.

Clemson last won an ACC Tournament in 2016 in Durham.

“We knew we were capable of this,” pitcher Caden Grice said of reaching the title game. “I know all the guys are excited to finally get that shot.”

The Tar Heels produced five hits to match their second-lowest total of the season. Yet they felt they had time for a comeback.

“At this ballpark, especially, just a couple of runners on, (you’re) just a couple of swings away from getting back into it,” said Tomas Frick, a catcher who homered twice.

North Carolina’s Alberto Osuna and Frick smacked solo home runs in back-to-back innings, but that still left the Tar Heels trailing 8-3 going to the bottom of the sixth.

Cannarella’s second triple of the game boosted Clemson’s edge to 10-3.

Frick added his second homer and 12th of the season in the ninth.

Grice (8-1), who ripped a two-run double in the first inning, limited the Tar Heels to three runs, four hits and one walk through seven innings. He struck out nine.

Clemson’s Billy Amick clobbered a two-run homer in the first inning off the snorting bull above the left-field fence and drilled a two-run triple in the second.

Ingle finished 3-for-3 in his abbreviated outing. Clemson coach Erik Bakich said his availability for Sunday might be in question.

“Probably just a bone bruise,” he said. “Hopefully, he will be good to go, but we won’t know until tomorrow.”

Meanwhile, the Tar Heels will wait to see what’s next for them on Monday.