NC State’s late surge earns series win over No. 11 UNC

NC State coach Elliott Avent sat in the dugout in the middle of the Wolfpack’s game against North Carolina and looked up at the scoreboard. His team had double the amount of hits than the Tar Heels, but it trailed by three runs. 

Why? North Carolina’s first three hits were all solo homers, which gave the Tar Heels an early jolt on the Doak Field scoreboard. But, like the Wolfpack did in the series opener Thursday, NC State did not roll over when North Carolina’s long ball antics were successful. 

Instead, the red and white stuck with its approach — and it paid off. 

NC State used small ball and opportune misfortune by North Carolina’s pitching to win 5-4 and take the series Friday night in Raleigh. 

The Wolfpack have a tendency of coming from behind to steal a win. They’ve walked off six times, including Thursday night, before using an RBI single, a wild pitch and a passed ball to take the lead late against the Tar Heels in the second meeting of the season. 

“We just kept scratching and clawing and then you just find a way” Avent said. “This team just keeps fighting.”

Fight is not a hard thing to find with teams in an NC State uniform this season. Football started 4-3 before it won five straight to close the regular season. Men’s basketball entered the postseason 17-14 and won nine in a row to make its first Final Four appearance since 1983 earlier this month. 

Raleigh has become a city encapsulated by teams that have a chip on their shoulder, and the Pack’s baseball squad is no different. It never feels like it is out of a game, even when the scoreboard says otherwise. 

That confidence was born from turning the thought of winning a big series into reality. NC State earned its third top-15 series victory of the year over North Carolina after it claimed weekend wins over then-No. 7 Duke and then-No. 2 Clemson in ACC play this season. 

“We’ve done a very good job of playing the game all the way through and not giving up,” Avent said. “We have finished games and we’ve been pretty good when we get them on at finding a way to get them in.”

Ask the Wolfpack’s top hitter, first baseman Garrett Pennington, and he is not sure where it comes from. The Pack just has it in itself to pull through when it needs to the most. 

“We get going late,” said Pennington, who went 3-for-4 with a double and an RBI in the win. “We don’t know what it is about it, but we get going late. Maybe not at the beginning. … We know we’re never out of the fight. We’ve got a little bit of fight in us and towards the end of the game we’ve got a lot of fight in us.”

NC State’s fight was evident in the later innings against North Carolina. Though it trailed the team was able to push past the Tar Heels’ ability to crank the ball over the fence. The visitors from Chapel Hill have hit eight home runs in the two games — seven of which have been solo shots. 

Pennington, a college baseball veteran on his third stop of his career, laid it out pretty simply when comparing NC State and North Carolina’s batting orders. 

“It’s frustrating, no doubt,” Pennington said. “They take their cuts and they can hit it over the fence quite a bit, but if you don’t have guys in front of you it’s hard. Solo home runs don’t hurt you, an offense hurts you. We’re getting offense late in the game, we’re figuring it out and doing our jobs.”

The Pack did its job to beat the Heels. Shortstop Brandon Butterworth, who hit the walk-off blast in Thursday’s win, laced an RBI single up the middle to kick off NC State’s rally. He later came around to score the go-ahead run on a passed ball. 

While the Western Carolina transfer executed his role well, so did the Wolfpack’s freshman relievers. Jaxon Lucas was called upon in the seventh and he gave NC State two no-hit innings with a pair of strikeouts. 

“He stopped things when things needed to be stopped to give us a chance,” Avent said of Lucas. “He was the one that settled it down. I’m sure that guy is feeling pretty good about things tonight.”

That opened the door for Jacob Dudan, a hard-throwing righty, to close the game. The Huntersville, N.C., native had a tall task of facing North Carolina’s top hitters. He retired Colby Wilkerson and Anthony Donofrio on back-to-back groundouts to freshman second baseman Luke Nixon to set up an at-bat with Vance Honeycutt, the Tar Heels’ slugger. 

Honeycutt has homered in five straight games, including a first-inning solo shot Friday, but Dudan was not afraid. He fell behind 2-0, but pumped three straight fastballs — 97, 98, 96 — to retire Honeycutt looking and end the game. 

Dudan leaped into the air in celebration and the Pack clinched the series win.

“I really can’t even explain that,” Dudan said with a laugh afterwards. “I’ve never been that excited in my life to get one strikeout.”

Though it was just one strikeout, Dudan’s 23rd of the year, it helped the Pack take its first series from the Tar Heels since 2021. Now, NC State has the chance to sweep North Carolina for the first time in three years — the same thing the team clad in light blue did last year. 

And NC State’s freshmen are well aware, even if they were not on the diamond that day. 

“I’ve been watching this rivalry for the past couple of years, ever since I’ve been committed to State,” Dudan said. “Watching all the games, I know last year they got swept, so this year to come back at our place and be 2-0 right now is amazing. We hope to continue that tomorrow and sweep them this year.”