Baseball Game at North Carolina Suspended Until Saturday.

April 16, 2004

Chapel Hill, NC –

The Clemson-North Carolina baseball game Friday night was suspended with the Tigers leading 2-1 in the bottom of the sixth inning. A power outage caused the suspension. Play will resume Saturday at 1:00 PM. The scheduled game for Saturday will start approximately 45 minutes after the conclusion of game one of the series.

Clemson got on the board in the second inning. Lou Santangelo led off with a single up the middle and went to third on Andy D’Alessio’s sharp single to right-center. Travis Storrer followed with a hard ground ball, but right at the shortstop, resulting in a double play. However, Santangelo scored on the play, giving the Tigers a 1-0 lead.

The Tar Heels threatened to do damage in the bottom of the second inning. Ross Cook and Jay Cox started it off with singles up the middle. They moved up a base on Wes Moyer’s sacrifice bunt. Third baseman Brad McCann made a great one-handed pickup and throw to take away a bunt hit from Moyer. After Bryan Steed walked to load the bases with one out, Lumsden struck out Blair Waggett. Then on a full count, Lumsden got Greg Mangum to fly out to end the inning. Through the first two innings, North Carolina left five runners on base without scoring.

The Tigers increased their lead to 2-0 in the fifth inning, once again thanks to D’Alessio. The freshman led off with a single to left field and advanced to second on Storrer’s sacrifice bunt. Russell Triplett followed with a line-drive single to right field with one out. D’Alessio correctly read that the ball would safely fall in the outfield and scored.

North Carolina came right back to cut the Tiger lead in half in the bottom of the fifth inning. After Waggett drew a one-out walk, Mangum lined a 1-2 pitch to left-center. Garrick Evans was not able to cut off the ball, enabling Waggett to score all the way from first. Evans was charged with an error, as the run was unearned. Lumsden, however, struck out the next two Tar Heels with the potential tying run on second base to end the threat. Through five innings, Lumsden had 10 strikeouts to his credit.

The Tar Heels threatened once again in the sixth inning. After striking out in his first two at-bats, Sammy Hewitt led off with a walk. Ross Cook followed with an infield single to shortstop to put runners at first and second with no outs. Then while Cook laid on the ground with an injury, four of the eight light towers suddenly went out at 8:31 PM. The delay was caused by a blown fuse. The two teams waited for repairs, but at approximately 10:00 PM the game was called.