Scott Forbes: UNC's middle infield is 'as good as we've ever had here'

Following the North Carolina Tar Heels‘ win over the LSU Tigers in the Chapel Hill Regional, UNC head coach Scott Forbes praised his team’s defense. In particular, he claimed that the Tar Heels’ middle infield is as good as they’ve ever had.

“These guys and the whole infield defense,” Scott Forbes said. “And nobody’s talking about our catchers either, Luke [Stevenson] was unbelievable and how about the play [Parker] Haskin made late blocking that ball? Our outfield plays were good.”

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“Our first team meeting every fall until I tell guys you can’t win a championship if you don’t pitch and defend. You can’t do it. You can’t hit your way to Omaha, it’s just not gonna happen. These guys are completely bought into that, they’re fundamental and we work on it every single day. They take pride in the ground balls,” Forbes said.

“We were happy we got to hit on the field today. We said, ‘Hey, we’re gonna do what we’ve been doing all year.’ Set those machines up. Take those ground balls. I’ve been here a long time and these guys they’re as good of a middle infield as we’ve ever had here.”

North Carolina’s second baseman, Alex Madera was the team’s eight-hole hitter while shortstop Colby Wilkerson was ninth in the order for Monday’s win over LSU. Both have been capable hitters this season, but they’ve shined with the leather.

This season, Madera has a fielding percentage of .991 while only making two errors. He also has 83 putouts and 129 assists. Wilkerson, meanwhile, has a .932 fielding percentage to go along with 77 putouts and 128 assists. Together, they’ve combined to make up an excellent middle infield that takes pressure off the UNC pitching staff.

Scott Forbes praised the pitching of Dalton Pence

Dalton Pence finished the game strongly for UNC, closing out LSU. After the game, Scott Forbes praised him for being a workhorse and working his way back after being injured.

“He’s a horse and yesterday’s game we had a plan. Unless it got really close, we didn’t want to use certain guys we feel like could lengthen out. They work so hard. That’s a credit to Coach [Bryant] Gaines for managing the pitching staff so well all year so you can have a guy like [Jason] DeCaro come back and throw off 60 pitches and then [Matthew] Matthijs and Pence,” Forbes said.

“Dalton is able to do that because he is just a blue collar hard working kid. I mean look at him. He’s got bigger, he’s gotten stronger, and you don’t recover if you don’t get addicted to that weight room. That kid we are lucky to have him here, that’s for sure. I saw him go through the injury and to see him work so hard to come back, it’s been really really cool for me.”