OMAHA, Nebraska — Connor Hults felt much better coming off the mound at the end of the game Tuesday than he did three days earlier.
Hults pitched 4⅓ innings of scoreless relief to thwart North Carolina's comeback attempt and Jaxson West and Max Williams hit back-to-back home runs in the ninth to ensure Florida State beat the Tar Heels 9-5 in an elimination game at the Men's College World. Tuesday series.
FSU took a three-run lead in the bottom of the ninth against Tennessee in its MCWS opener on Saturday. A check-swing call that didn't go well for the Seminoles (it would have ended the game if it did) and Dylan Dreiling's single that followed produced a 12-11 victory for the Volunteers.
Hults was the guy who threw the pitch to Dreiling, the only batter he faced.
“Hults' response: Four-plus innings? Unbelievable,” Seminoles coach Link Jarrett said.
The junior left-hander relied on a strong fastball and mixed it effectively with off-speed pitches, something he had talked about with pitching coach Micah Posey.
“Being able to locate the fastball in any count was new to my game,” Hults said. “I haven't done it in a few weeks. It's there. But me and Coach Posey had been talking about mixing in more fastballs and changeups to start getting hitters off the curve. I was able to locate some fastballs and expand my ball outside. -speed when needed, and that worked in our favor.
By the time he finished the eighth, he had no doubt he'd be back out for the ninth, and he let Jarrett know.
“'Don't even think about that,'” Hults told Jarrett, according to the coach. “There were some other words mixed in there. I'm very happy for him. It's hard to come off that field like it happened.” [Saturday] evening. You all saw it and know it. And he really responded.”
The Tar Heels (48-16) lost consecutive games for the first time since mid-April and finished 1-2 in their first MCWS since 2018.
“We had one of the best teams in the country and our goal was to win this whole thing,” Casey Cook of the Tar Heels said. “In the postseason, we didn't necessarily get what we wanted. We didn't get what we wanted, but we have no regrets. We gave everything we had.”
Although FSU and North Carolina are both from the Atlantic Coast Conference, this was their first meeting since the Tar Heels swept a three-game series to end the 2022 regular season.
Florida State led 3-1 after chasing Aidan Haugh (4-3) and Matthew Matthijs in the third inning. The Tar Heels turned to Dalton Pence, who extended his scoreless inning streak in the NCAA Tournament to 14⅓ innings before five singles in six at-bats led to four runs in the fifth inning, giving the Seminoles a lead. 7-1.
North Carolina scored four runs in the bottom half. With two runners on base, Vance Honeycutt greeted Conner Whittaker with his fourth home run in five games, and Jackson Van De Brake followed with an RBI single to make it a two-run game.
“That's what the team has been all year: never giving up,” Honeycutt said. “That's a credit to how they train us, how they direct us and the character of the guys in the locker room.”
Hults (3-1) got the final out of the inning and retired 12 of 15 batters in his longest outing of the season. He was never in trouble. Honeycutt singled leading off the seventh, but was erased on a runoff between the first and second. After Van De Brake doubled in the eighth, Hults got two groundouts. He walked Alex Madera to start the ninth, but sandwiched a strikeout between two groundouts to end the game.
West, FSU's No. 9 hitter, had four hits in a career-high five at-bats. His home run was his second in four games and just his third of the season.
Williams hit his fifth home run in eight NCAA Tournament games and has 14 on the season.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
