USC baseball will have to play a winner-take-all Game 3 against North Carolina in the Chapel Hill Super Regional. The Trojans were blanked 4-0 by Carolina ace Jason DeCaro on Saturday in Game 2. The series is tied 1-1 going into Sunday’s decisive game. One baseball game can and will go in any direction. Expecting one baseball game to go in a given direction is always and inherently risky. However, if one had to predict what the Trojans will need to do to win and go to Omaha for the College World Series, the lean is toward a high-scoring game rather than a low-scoring game.
North Carolina has exactly one base hit with runners in scoring position through two games in this series. The Tar Heels are stranding boatloads of baserunners. They squandered bases-loaded opportunities multiple times in Saturday’s Game 2, sometimes with only one out. UNC’s situational hitting has been awful, and yet the Tar Heels can still advance to Omaha because their staff ace, Jason DeCaro, pitched a complete-game shutout in Game 2. DeCaro threw a two-hit masterpiece. No Trojan reached second base all game long.
The good news for USC is that it won’t have to face DeCaro and can conceivably get to the middle of the Tar Heel rotation. The bad news for USC is that North Carolina’s impossibly bad RISP hitting is likely to improve.
What does it all mean? Carolina is likely to score more than four or five runs. USC probably will need to win this game 9-8 as opposed to 4-3. Can USC — with Grant Govel unavailable and Mason Edwards unlikely to offer anything more than maybe two innings on short rest — find enough pitching to once again hold Carolina under five runs? It’s doubtful. The bats will have to roar. That is what powered USC to this stage of the NCAA Tournament.
This article originally appeared on Trojans Wire: USC-North Carolina Game 3 super regional baseball preview
Reporting by Matt Zemek, Trojans Wire / Trojans Wire
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Matt Zemek, Trojans Wire | USA TODAY Network
