The North Carolina Tar Heels earned the right to host a regional tournament in this year’s college baseball championship tournament. However, more noise has been made about who was in their regional than about the Tar Heels themselves.
Over the weekend, North Carolina will host Wofford, Long Island, and the defending national champions LSU. As they prepare for the Chapel Hill Regional, North Carolina head coach Scott Forbes discusses the difficulties of not overlooking the rest of the regional field as the top seed while revealing the extra motivation the Tar Heels have not to fall into that trap.
“It’s not hard for me. And I can tell them; I’ve been in the shoes that they’re in [as a] national seed and lost Davidson,” Forbes said. “So that’s exactly what I will tell them at the end of the practice today. Like if you want to talk about LSU, LSU, LSU, the next thing you know, you don’t ever play LSU.”
“So [with] this team, it won’t be difficult. We got a lot of guys that watched Arkansas celebrate on our field; we got a lot of guys that had to go on the road last year and watched their teammate’s season in a regional. So that’s motivation and always is. These guys are driven, and they know we’re playing at home, and playing at home means something.”
A ton of noise has been made about LSU as the Tigers came roaring down the stretch in the regular season and in the SEC championship tournament, making it all the way to the championship game before coming up short against this year’s No. 1 overall seed for the championship tournament the Tennessee volunteers. However, North Carolina has been consistent all season long, putting up a 42-13 overall record and 22-8 in the highly competitive ACC conference. The tar heels also had the fourth-highest RPI this season.
In terms of looking at their own success, Forbes wants to make sure that his team isn’t looking past anyone and isn’t looking directly at one team in the regional round. The Tar Heels head coach also does not want his team to feel overconfident about their odds, especially with UNC sporting an impressive 32-2 at home this season.
North Carolina will get the ball rolling in the Chapel Hill Regional on Friday, May 31, against the No. 4 seed in their region, Long Island. That will be the second game of the day, with Wofford and LSU squaring off at 12:00 PM ET. North Carolina and Long Island are scheduled to do battle at 6:00 PM ET.
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