The baseball team celebrates after first year Kyle Datres (8) hit a walk off RBI to secure the team’s 2-1 victory over Oklahoma State University.
Three games. Three players. Three walk-off wins.
In its first series at home this season, the No. 14 North Carolina baseball team turned late-inning magic into a sweep (2-1, 7-6, 4-3) of No. 16 Oklahoma State.
Coming into the season, UNC (5-1) knew it would rely on a combined effort from all of its players to have success. In Game 1 against the Cowboys (2-5), it was first-year infielder Kyle Datres’ turn to step up.
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On the first day of his first year of high school, one of Datres’ teachers told his class to write down three life goals. Scribbled across the top of Datres’ list was this: “Play baseball at the University of North Carolina.”
Over four years later, he achieved the feat, and with two runners on in the bottom of the ninth inning Friday, he made the most of his home debut.
Datres ripped a 1-1 pitch into the gap in right-center, scoring the runner from second base and handing the Tar Heels a 2-1 win.
“Just to think about all the great memories that have happened here at (Boshamer Stadium), and this is my first time here playing, to end the game like that it means something special,” he said.
At the beginning of the 2015 season, sophomore Brian Miller was a walk-on just trying to prove he belonged in a North Carolina uniform.
Miller tied for second on the team in batting average in 2015, and aimed to continue his good fortune in 2016. Through six games, he is second on the team with a .385 average.
“It’s a new day,” he said. “If you struggle, just do whatever you can to help your team win.”
On Saturday Miller got that opportunity. In the bottom of the 10th inning with the score tied at 6, the sophomore had a chance to give UNC its second-straight walk-off win. He delivered.
With the bases loaded and one out, Miller lifted a ball just over the glove of the Cowboys’ second baseman.
The Tar Heels, who had trailed 4-0 after the top of the first inning, had come back to win 7-6.
“I don’t think anybody thought during the course of the game that we were gonna lose …” Coach Mike Fox said. “That’s a pretty good feeling when you sense that in the dugout.”
Senior infielder Eli Sutherland has seen his share of walk-off wins, but that didn’t make it any less special when he singled in two runners in the bottom of the ninth inning Sunday to give UNC a 4-3 win and a series sweep.
After the game the former transfer deflected praise onto his teammates, without whom he said his heroics wouldn’t have been possible.
Three games. Three players. Three walk-off wins.
UNC knows it has to rely on a combined effort to have success in 2016, and Sutherland is confident his teammates — just like they did against the Cowboys — will step up.
“I love this team a lot,” he said. “I feel like anybody one through nine, or even off the bench, I got full faith in them that they can do it too.”
