After a three-hour, five-minute weather delay at Rosenblatt Stadium, UNC's elimination game against LSU in the College World Series was suspended Thursday night with the Tar Heels leading 2-0 in the top of the first inning.

The game will resume at 7:08 tonight (televised on ESPN) with the seventh batter of the game, Garrett Gore, at the plate with one strike and one out.

The rest of the CWS matchups have been moved back a day, meaning Georgia and Stanford will play at 2 p.m. Saturday, and the winner of the Tigers-Tar Heels showdown will play Fresno State in the 7 p.m. game. If necessary, another round of elimination games will be played Sunday. The best-of-three championship series will begin Monday, as originally scheduled.

"It will be a long night for us with the bases loaded and one out and in a 2-0 hole,'' LSU coach Paul Mainieri said. "It was a rough night for us."

Indeed, right fielder Tim Fedroff put No. 2 seed Carolina (52-13) on the board first when his RBI double brought home Dustin Ackley for Ackley's school-record 81st run scored of the season to make it 1-0. Then, Tigers (49-18-1) starting pitcher Blake Martin loaded the bases when he beaned catcher Tim Federowicz on the back of his batting helmet, then second baseman Kyle Seager on his right elbow.

Martin was so rattled he threw four straight balls to Chad Flack, who walked to score Fedroff and give UNC a 2-0 cushion before lightning struck and the skies opened.

Catcher Mark Fleury said the Tar Heels "would have stayed here the whole night if we had to" in order to finish the game. But after such a long delay, the NCAA Division I Baseball Committee decided it did not want the players to restart play so late, especially when the winner would have had to play another game tonight. So after originally delaying the game at 7:27 EST, the officials postponed the game at 10:32 p.m., only asking the coaches if they cared whether they played at 2 p.m. or 7 p.m. today.

(They didn't.)

Even though the Tar Heels couldn't play during those three hours, they tried to keep loose -- alternately relaxing, chatting and goofing around in the dugout.

In the first hour of the delay, Fleury pulled a surgical glove over his head and used eye-black to paint a fake beard on his face to amuse his teammates. Near the end of the second hour, bullpen catcher Chase Jones -- wearing pitcher Brian Moran's No. 46 jersey -- put his pants over his head, cleats on his hands, jersey on his legs -- and then performed somersaults in the rain, to the delight of the crowd and his teammates (who "pants'd" him by pulling down the jersey).

"You try to be as random as possible, really,'' Fleury said, referring to Jones as "our upside-down man." "Anything that passes the time just works. And we just like having fun."

When they get back to business tonight, Fox said he didn't know if he would still start freshman right-hander Matt Harvey, who warmed up before Thursday's game but never got the chance to go to the mound. Mainieri said he had planned to pull Martin even if the weather hadn't delayed the game and said he didn't know who he would put on the mound when the game resumes.

Thursday marked the second time in the last three College World Series that UNC has participated in a weather-delayed game. In the first game of the championship series in 2006, Carolina's 4-3 victory over Oregon State was delayed for 1 hour, 11 minutes in the sixth inning. A game at the CWS has not been postponed, though, since 2000.

"This happens in baseball,'' Fox said. "Both teams were here for a long time. I think it made sense not to hang around here longer."