Chapel Hill, North Carolina-North Carolina head coach Scott Forbes was suspended for two games by the NCAA after losing to Virginia Commonwealth on Saturday night, the second Saturday night of the NCAA Tournament Regional.
Forbes has been sent off for discussions with referees Jeff Henrichs (HP), John Brammer (1B), Mark Wagers (2B) and Arthur Tigpen (3B). In support of VCU.
UNC athletic director Bubba Cunningham tweeted a comment following a confirmed outage while waiting for a statement from the NCAA.
“It’s very disappointing to have the NCAA confirm the suspension of two of our head baseball coaches, but there is no explanation for the phone that ultimately led to the suspension,” he writes. “We have to do better for student athletes and teams.”
The lack of calls that infuriated Forbes came to the top three times. The Tar Heels had one runner in first and second place. The ball popped out and VCU second baseman Marcus O’Malley had a hard time sliding the ball. Both UNC runners expected a catch and were a few feet away from each base.
When the ball was dropped, O’Malley completed the double play of 4-6-5 and finished the inning. NCAA Rule 2, Section 48 describes the infield fly rule as follows: The base was occupied before the two were gone. “
This followed a controversial play in the second inning when Thomas Flick slipped to second base on bases loaded after the ground ball that Rams tried to double play came into play. Flick and shortstop Connor Fujak clashed, blasted play, Johnny Castagnozzi became safe on first base, and UNC made a bet on second base, called runner interference, rather than recording a run.
UNC asked for a review and the ruling was upheld.
Forbes was sent off once before the season, according to a UNC spokesman, which has nothing to do with the outage. According to a UNC spokesman, the two possibilities leading to the outage were that Forbes did something that was considered “terrible” by the referees or was unable to leave the arena in a timely manner.
The school is seeking an explanation for both the runner’s interference call and the infield fly decision, and why it led to Forbes’ outage, and is waiting for an official statement.
UNC will play Georgia in the elimination game at 1:00 pm on Sunday
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update: NCAA provided the following statement on Sunday at 12:12 am …
“A statement may be available after the referee has given us an accurate report of what happened during and after playing in the three innings of tonight’s match at Chapel Hill. One of the rules that may have been given is that the fair fly ball
Being considered an infielder, the infielder can be caught with normal effort. “
