Colleges

Heels tip Beavers in Series opener

By TIMES WIRES
Published June 25, 2006

OMAHA, Neb. - Chad Flack saw the ball tip off the catcher's mitt, so he took off for the plate.

As fast he could.

"I got a horrible jump, I really did," the husky first baseman said.

It turned out to be good enough.

With a rumble home and a headfirst slide, Flack put North Carolina within a victory of its first College World Series title as the Tar Heels beat Oregon State 4-3 on Saturday night in the opening game of the best-of-three championship series.

"I screamed for him to go," coach Mike Fox said. "Fortunately, he had just enough of a secondary lead, and had just enough foot speed - one less cheeseburger - to get in there."

With the score tied at 3 in the eighth, the 6-foot-3, 215-pound Flack hit a hard liner into the rightfield corner and slid into third with a triple - his fourth this season.

"Rounding second, I saw Coach Fox and he was telling me to get down, and all I was trying to do was not slide past the bag, so I held on to it as much as I could," Flack said.

With Jay Cox at the plate, reliever Joe Paterson threw an inside pitch that nicked off catcher Mitch Canham's mitt and rolled to the backstop.

Flack headed for home as Canham recovered the ball and tossed it to Paterson at the plate - but Flack slid headfirst ahead of the tag.

"You saw it. It got past," Canham said. "The guy scored. They win. That's about it."

In the ninth, reliever Jonathan Hovis (8-2) issued a leadoff walk to Chris Kunda, but Andrew Carignan came on after Canham's sacrifice and struck out Darwin Barney and John Wallace for his 15th save.

"As a closer, that's what you live for in college baseball," Carignan said.

The Tar Heels (54-13) need to beat the Beavers (48-16) once more to become the first Atlantic Coast Conference team to win the College World Series since Wake Forest in 1955.

Oregon State took a 3-2 lead in the sixth on Cole Gillespie's two-run homer off starter Andrew Miller, the No. 6 overall draft pick by Detroit. Gillespie reached out and hit a 1-and-2 pitch from Miller over the rightfield wall - just before drenching rains delayed the game for 1 hour, 11 minutes.

West Virginia coach Rich Rodriguez, who led the Mountaineers to their third straight Big East title and a 38-35 victory over Georgia in the Sugar Bowl, received a three-year extension that will pay him at least $1-million a year. The deal runs through the 2012 season.

[Last modified June 25, 2006, 03:32:55]