University of California, Los Angeles, Athletics
UCLA
North Carolina
No. 11 UCLA Suffers First Loss of the Season, 9-6, to No. 17 UNC
February 21, 2015 | Baseball
ORLANDO, FLA. – The UCLA Bruins suffered their first loss of the season, 9-6, to the North Carolina Tar Heels on Saturday afternoon at Jay Bergman Field. The two teams have now split the opening pair of games in this weekend's three-game set.
Coming on in relief, Tar Heels pitcher Reilly Hovis (1-0) earned the win, going two innings, allowing two runs and striking out three. Freshman Griffin Canning (0-1) got the loss for UCLA, allowing two runs in two-thirds of an innings work out of the bullpen. North Carolina's Zach Rice earned the save.
For the sixth consecutive game, Ty Moore had a multi-hit afternoon, going 4-for-5 with two runs and a run batted in to lead the Bruin offense. Also notching multi-hit games, Kevin Kramer and Luke Persico each went 2-for-5 at the plate.
The Bruins were playing from behind all afternoon, only taking the lead once in the top of the sixth inning. Ultimately, the UCLA bullpen proved to be the team's demise, allowing six runs in three innings to close out the game.
North Carolina scored the game's first three runs, plating one in the fourth inning and two in the fifth. A pair of bad hops on bouncing balls in the infield led directly to the Tar Heels' two-run fifth inning.
UCLA responded with a big sixth inning to capture its' only lead of the game, combining for five hits and four runs to go ahead 4-3. Christoph Bono got the inning going with a double and would later come in to score on a wild pitch. Then, the combination of a Kevin Kramer single, Luke Persico double, Moore single and Sean Bouchard single brought home three more runs for the Bruins.
However, North Carolina recaptured the lead just a half inning later. The Tar Heels scored two runs in the bottom half of the sixth inning to go up 5-4.
UCLA was able to add two more runs in the eighth, but it wasn't enough to overcome the offensive production from North Carolina. The Tar Heels put up eight runs in the final four innings to claim a 9-6 victory over the Bruins.
The final game of the series between UCLA (5-1) and North Carolina (4-1) is tomorrow at 8:00am PT. Cody Poteet (1-0) is scheduled to start for the Bruins and J.B. Bukauskas for the Tar Heels. As always, listen to tomorrow's game called live by Tim Wilhelm on uclabruins.com.
Notes: Ty Moore's four hits tie his single game career-high mark, set twice prior to today. Moore now leads UCLA in average (.536), hits (15), doubles (3) and total bases (18). The Bruins' two, three and four hitters (Kramer, Persico, Moore) combined for eight of the team's 12 hits in today's game. UCLA has amassed double-digit hit totals in five of its' six games.
