For UNC baseball, the Omaha stakes rise after defeat against Tennessee
One of the charming quirks and contrasts of Omaha and the College World Series is that while players are out there on the field performing on the brightest and most pressure-filled stage of their lives, there’s this Ferris wheel in the distance, beyond the center field wall, going round and round with these garish neon lights. Riders enjoying a spin while baseball teams fight for their existence.
As North Carolina labored in the late innings against Tennessee here on Sunday, the night sky growing darker, the Ferris wheel did its colorful thing. The lights on its spokes turned purple and green and turquoise. There were blue and yellow swirls. Then spirals. And it all underscored that while this is a national championship event, it’s also a carnival. An almost-two-week-long party.
In college sports, there is nothing like the College World Series. It takes over this city and this city embraces it perhaps like no other place embraces another college sports event. Coaches and players dream of getting here. The mere mention of the word “Omaha” conjures all kinds of hopes and longing. And then, for those fortunate enough to make it here, the party starts from arrival.
And it continues, so long as the winning does. N.C. State learned about the other side of this trip on Saturday, when the Wolfpack was on the other side of a walk-off ending in a crushing loss against Kentucky. And Sunday, it turned out, was UNC’s turn to experience some heartbreak. At least the Tar Heels’ 6-1 victory against Tennessee lacked late drama.
There was no shocking gut punch, no sudden ending for UNC. Its misery played out slowly, like the rotation of that carnival ride in the distance, and by the end coach Scott Forbes and his players appeared resigned to their fate as if they’d accepted it hadn’t been their night. When it ended, Forbes quietly removed the lineup card from a bulletin board, folded it and put it away.
He unpinned the photo of J.R. Anton, a Tar Heels super fan who died last month, at 31. Every game, Forbes hangs that picture up and now he placed it in a binder and packed his bag and walked out of the dugout, stopping to sign autographs. Vance Honeycutt, likely the Tar Heels’ most recognizable player, did the same thing.
That sort of thing — signing autographs after a humbling defeat — doesn’t happen in other sports, but it happened Sunday night in Omaha. It’s part of what makes the College World Series different, as is the emotional swing from going so ecstatic to be here to desperately wanting to stick around. In most NCAA postseasons, a loss means it’s over. Here, teams get to ponder their mortality.
“Good thing is we lost, but we ain’t done,” Forbes said afterward. And even in defeat, Parks Harber, the senior third baseman who transferred to UNC from Georgia, said he remained “really excited” before he amended his description to say he was “really, really excited” to be here, still.
“This is the most fun I’ve ever had playing baseball,” he said. “I’m not going to let this loss ruin any of my experiences here. I’ll be so grateful that I have another opportunity to go out there and play and just leave it all out there and be ready to go.”
Sunday was the first day when Omaha began to pare down the guest list. Virginia, the team North Carolina beat here on Friday, ended its season with a loss against Florida State. Monday, either Florida or N.C. State will play its final game. Tuesday, either UNC or Florida State will go home. And the club will continue to become more and more exclusive.
To stick around, the Tar Heels need their offense to awaken. Sunday night, their only run came on Honeycutt’s home run to lead off the sixth inning. Moments later, the Tar Heels had two on and nobody out, and then runners on the corners with one out. But Tennessee picked off Anthony Donofrio, the runner on first, and a would-be rally died. It was UNC’s last chance.
The Volunteers, meanwhile, mustered only seven hits of their own. But two of them were home runs, including Kavares Tears’ three-run shot in the fourth inning, and the Volunteers drove in five of their runs with two outs. The difference was that simple: that Tennessee mustered clutch hits in key moments, while UNC did not, and Forbes spoke with a sense of longing that it’d come.
“We just haven’t been able to have a big, big inning,” he said. “But we’re very capable of doing that. It can flip, just like that.”
It just hasn’t, yet. After Forbes and Honeycutt signed autographs for several minutes, they walked through a back hall and toward the Tar Heels’ locker room. The team packed quickly, most players headed toward the bus. Harber and Honeycutt followed Forbes into a press conference where they all tried to speak with confidence while understanding the stakes.
They didn’t need to be articulated. Everyone knows now it’s a one-game season. The margin is gone, and would only return if the Tar Heels win three consecutive times to advance to the College World Series championship series. Possible? Yes. Likely? Not especially.
N.C. State faces the same reality on Monday, on the other side of the bracket. For UNC, at least, there’s some history. It has been here before, both in the literal and figurative sense, and Forbes made sure to bring up that history. It was a reminder to his players and maybe himself.
“In 2007 we lost the second game and we made it to the national championship,” he said.
And so he said he told his guys: “Keep your head up.”
“You’re at the College World Series,” he said. “You have a great opportunity ahead of you.”
Just down the hall, Tennessee was celebrating its 2-0 start here. The Volunteers are off to the semifinals, which begin Wednesday. And outside on Sunday night, meanwhile, the Omaha party was continuing and the Jell-O shots were going down and the bars were full, as they always are in this town, this time of year.
Little by little, though, the gathering was starting to shrink.
Virginia had already been sent home. Both the pressure and longing to stay were rising.
This story was originally published June 17, 2024 at 6:00 AM.
