CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — Derek Clark’s challenge is to beat depression today, at least that was the feeling WVU head coach Randy Mazey got when he looked at No. 4 North Carolina’s lineup.
“As a coach, if you want to get depressed, go watch the videos and the scouting reports on their hitters,” Mazey said. “It’s depressing how good they are. They’re so physical, so competitive and so confident in this park. It’s going to be tough.”
North Carolina (45-14) enters its super regional matchup at 6 p.m. today against West Virginia (36-22) as the 11th highest-scoring team in the country with 522 runs scored.
The Tar Heels are 20th in the country with 109 home runs and 25th in hitting with a .308 team batting average.
Five UNC players have hit at least 13 home runs this season, led by center fielder Vance Honeycutt’s 24 dingers.
Depressed? Not Clark, who will start Game 1 for the Mountaineers in the best-of-three series for the right to advance to the College World Series.
“They have a pretty elite lineup in the country,” the WVU lefty said. “I just have to try and keep them off-balanced.”
The news of Clark’s pitching heroics at the Tucson (Ariz.) Regional — he pitched a complete game to open that tournament and then closed out the deciding third game in the ninth inning — made its way to Chapel Hill, N.C., creating some curiosity amongst the Tar Heels’ heavy hitters.
“We have definitely done some work to try and prepare for him,” said North Carolina outfielder Casey Cook, who has 18 home runs and leads UNC with 76 RBIs. “We have seen some lefties like him, with good workability, so we’ve done that kind of work before.
“You can’t cheat his fastball. He doesn’t throw it hard enough to blow it past you, but he mixes everything up so well and he’ll get you out in front and things like that.”
And so we go back to Clark, a 5-foot-8 lefty facing the college version of murder’s row.
He had pulled off a similar feat a week ago against Dallas Baptist, throwing 101 pitches against a lineup that has 115 home runs, but limited the Patriots to just one run and four hits.
Is there still enough magic left in his left arm?
“I’m just going to do my thing and compete,” Clark said. “You have to execute your spots and you can’t make too many mistakes. They don’t miss mistakes. They’re the No. 4 team in the country for a reason. If you don’t make mistakes, you’re going to have a good chance of winning the game.”
On the other side will be North Carolina pitcher Shea Sprague, another lefty somewhat in the same mold as Clark.
He moves the ball around and his fastball rarely goes north of 90 mph.
Clark is, “basically like Shea, to be honest,” Cook said. “The velocities are about the same, we’ve talked about that with the coaches. We hit against Shea a lot in the fall, so that will probably resinate the most with us.”
Sprague’s last outing saw the junior go 4 1/3 innings, while allowing four hits and no runs in a victory against LSU.
He’s 3-1 on the season with a 3.76 ERA, but he also knows what Clark is facing in the Tar Heels’ lineup.
“Yeah, they pretty much lit me up,” Sprague said with a smile. “Some of the guys were asking me for pointers on how I would approach them. It does seem kind of funny that we’re (Clark and Sprague) both similar pitchers. We both kind of mirror each other.”
