The Tar Heels have put in the requisite work and produced a special baseball season. Their 62nd game of this journey arrives Friday on the big stage in Omaha.
Evan Rogers
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — Day by day and step by step, North Carolina has gone about putting in the work and embracing the assembly-line process that can produce a successful baseball season, which, for these Tar Heels, will culminate in the College World Series.
UNC's path to the CWS began last summer, when many members of the team's impact freshman class arrived on campus, and settled in alongside some of the veterans who had opted stick around, most notably star Vance Honeycutt, who was rehabbing a back injury. Then came fall practices and intrasquad scrimmages, before playing a 2024 campaign that started in February and will reach the 62nd game of this season when the Tar Heels open the CWS against ACC league rival Virginia on Friday afternoon (2 p.m., ESPN).
The everyday grind has helped fuel the journey to Omaha, Neb., for Carolina. But as catcher Luke Stevenson pointed out, he and the rest of the Tar Heels prefer to view those day-by-day and step-by-step requirements through a different perspective.
"I don't like the word 'grind,' because grind just sounds like it's forced to do," the freshman Stevenson said this week. "Like everyone here, we don't grind. We just do everything we can to the best of our ability, and we have a lot of fun doing it. We've been putting in hours upon hours since August for this moment, and we're all really excited. So that grind that we've been enjoying for the last 10 months is all going to pay off in the next couple of weeks."
UNC (47-14) is making its first appearance in the CWS under the direction of coach Scott Forbes. Now in his fourth season in charge, Forbes served as a longtime assistant under former coach Mike Fox, who retired in 2020. Forbes shared a similar sentiment to Stevenson this week, while sitting in the home dugout at Boshamer Stadium, a day before the Tar Heels loaded up and traveled to Omaha.
"I'm extremely excited," Forbes said. "I'm excited for me personally, just to be with these guys. The longer I can be with them the better, because I just enjoy the group so much. … It's an exciting time around here."
Carolina outlasted reigning national champion LSU 4-3 in 10 innings in a winner-take-all matchup to advance out of the NCAA Tournament's regional round, before sweeping past West Virginia in two particularly tense super regional games to move on to the CWS.
UNC, the No. 4 national seed, has earned its 12th trip to the College World Series, and first in six years. The Tar Heels are making their eighth visit to Omaha since 2006, and seeking to capture their first-ever national championship in baseball.
It has been a postseason run packed with walk-off heroics and late-game drama, as Carolina has trailed in the ninth inning in three of its five victories during this NCAA Tournament. Stevenson said delivering amid the high-pressure demands of crunch time was the focal point of a recent hitter's meeting.
"We had an unbelievable crowd in the regional, in the super regional, so (you have) to slow yourself down in those big moments," Stevenson said. "And it's only going to be bigger in Omaha, and more pressure, more everything there. So really just being able to slow the game down and not try to do too much."
Forbes said that playing in elevated environments this season — including the sellout crowd of more than 9,000 that showed up to see the Tar Heels square off against Wake Forest last month at the ACC Tournament in Charlotte, N.C. — helps prepare the Tar Heels for the main-event atmosphere that awaits at the CWS.
Carolina played in front of a record crowd of 4,491 last weekend at Boshamer Stadium, in the second game of the super regional series against West Virginia. Charles Schwab Field, home of the CWS in Omaha, has a listed capacity of 24,000, but has seen crowds exceeding 28,000 during prior tournaments.
UNC is tied with Clemson for the second-most CWS appearances without a national title. Their drought trails only Florida State (24 CWS appearances without claiming the crown). With the stakes higher than ever and a roster of players all experiencing their Omaha debut, UNC will step on college baseball's biggest stage with a clear-eyed approach.
"Obviously there is more pressure and the games are different," Stevenson said. "Every game that we play could be our last, but we treat it like every other game because you have to. You can't play and put that pressure on yourself. So like, subconsciously, we're telling ourselves, 'it's just another game.'
"But we're aware that every game with this group could be our last and we don't take that lightly. We're a really, really close group and we want to play every single game we can until that last game."
