Iowa baseball topples North Carolina to open NCAA Tournament

TERRE HAUTE — Razor thin is the line between regional triumph and season desperation when the NCAA Tournament lights flip on — and Iowa baseball toyed with both sides Friday night. The loser’s bracket fight isn’t a fun one. Opening with a victory is essential for any kind of lengthy stay.

Rick Heller’s bunch arrived in Terre Haute as regional newbies. It exited Friday having experienced enough tension to last a lifetime.

North Carolina’s ninth-inning drama nearly erased a solid Iowa effort that had the Hawkeyes in control throughout, but reliever Luke Llewellyn punched out two Tar Heels with the tying and go-ahead runs in scoring position to preserve a 5-4 Iowa victory at Bob Warn Field.

Reaching that point was no simple strut. Tense baseball dominated the night as expected and tested Iowa with one dicey situation, all the way down to the final frame. A game Iowa controlled throughout dramatically teetered late, after Albert Osuna nullified Iowa’s two eighth-inning runs with a long ninth-inning homer off Will Christophersen. If was the first sign of Tar Heel life in several innings and could’ve rattled a different bunch, especially after North Carolina plated another and suddenly had the go-ahead runs in scoring position

Heller went and got his slider-heavy right-hander for Luke Llewellyn, who surrendered a double before punching out the next two to let everyone in gold breathe easy.

The late drama nearly erased an Iowa effort that saw the Hawkeyes grab control early, plating two first-inning runs on Sam Hojnar’s opposite-field double sliced down the left-field line. Two-out action has buoyed the Hawkeyes all season, and their ability to pounce on the first opportunity became more and more crucial as North Carolina missed chance after chance.

Tasked with the Hawkeyes’ first regional start in six years, Marcus Morgan ducked, dipped and dove around trouble all evening, refusing to let North Carolina cash in any significant traffic. The adversity started instantly — like the game’s second pitch early, when Morgan plunked leadoff man Casey Cook — but Iowa’s immediate response set the tone for an evening full of damage control.

The Tar Heels had runners in scoring position in four of the first six frames, including two in the first and bases loaded on two separate occasions in the fourth — yet could only muster one sacrifice fly off the unflappable Morgan. Despite issuing four walks with two hit by pitches over five otherwise productive innings, the right-hander stranded six Tar Heels and kept Iowa in control.

Jack Whitlock got his cue and stranded two more in the sixth before cruising through the next two frames for a near-spotless three-inning relief outing. It was important Iowa’s best bullpen weapon right now bounced back from a tough Big Ten Tournament title game. Whitlock left little doubt on that question.

Just when it seemed the Hawkeyes would secure their first victory this season when scoring fewer than five runs, here came…