University of North Carolina Athletics
Peering Back, Looking Forward
May 3, 2000 | Baseball
May 3, 2000
By: Travis Everette, TarHeelBlue.com
Chapel Hill, NC--Some may say that North Carolina Baseball over the past two seasons has been a series of streaks. Others may tell you that the Tar Heels have been a team that on any given day could beat any team in the country. Finally, you have those that have been around Boshamer Stadium and the Diamond Heels for a while, and these aristocrats of the American Pastime simply say that UNC has a lot of fun and plays the game with a style not seen in Chapel Hill for some time. No matter whom people side with in this intense debate over the source of the newfound success of Carolina Baseball, certainly no one would disagree that North Carolina is a program on the rise.
Hot starts are an easy trick for the Tar Heels, just ask the combined 37 UNC opponents who have gone down in order to begin the past two campaigns. Among them you will find names of teams consistently considered to be in the nation's elite: Miami, Rice, and UCLA herald a pack that also includes such powerful teams as Central Florida, East Carolina, Virginia Commonwealth, Fresno State, and Coastal Carolina. All of these teams and too many more to be mentioned have fallen to Carolina in their dazzling starts over the past two years.
This season, the Tar Heels were the first team to reach 20 wins in the season and held the nation's best start through the start of ACC play in March. Not bad, considering they were playing what was arguably the toughest schedule in the country over the first two months. 15-6 over those first 21 would have been wonderful, but 21-0 was ridiculous to even consider. Or, maybe not. Somehow, UNC managed to come out of the starting gate like a team with months of warm weather practice under its belt even though flying out of Raleigh-Durham International Airport wasn't even possible for the opening weekend of the season because of a record-breaking 21 inches of snow that had blanketed Chapel Hill and the entire state. It didn't show that Miami and Central Florida were coming off of three weeks of beautiful weather. The team playing nearly flawless baseball was the one who hadn't even been able to dig down to their field for almost a week.
"The Start" as it is now referred to continued through a home stretch at Boshamer Stadium where Carolina has been dominant through the last several years. Then came the trip that would be a measuring stick for the upstart Tar Heels. Sure, they had beaten two top ten teams already in Miami and Rice, but those were single games and they certainly couldn't be expected to continue such a rampant pace on the road at heavy hitting UCLA, #2 in the nation. 21-0 was almost a never was before it got to 7-0. Going into the final inning in game one of the UCLA series, the Tar Heels trailed 13-4. Even when the first couple of runs came across the plate with no outs, I personally remember chalking the game up as over. That moment may live with me for the rest of my life, because I have never before or since been so awfully wrong. What ensued was the most exhilarating, gutsy, hard-nosed, and downright unbelievable rally I have ever seen in any sport of any kind. The youthful Tar Heels would go on to put up a whopping 13 runs in the top of that inning and win by the final 17-13 tally. Kevin Costner once said in one of the greatest sports movies ever made that "Every once in a while in your life a defining moment comes along, and when you get a defining moment, either you define the moment or the moment defines you." That February night in Los Angeles was a defining moment and the Tar Heels put a Carolina Blue stamp on it. They defined it as one of the greatest moments in UNC athletic history and one of the greatest comebacks of all time. Twice more in the UCLA series, the Heels would trail big, and twice more they would rally for the win, leaving the Bruins baffled and the college baseball world watching in awe.
An extended stay in Chapel Hill and the cozy confines would prove to be all the fuel that UNC needed to get off to the best start in school history and the second best in ACC annals. The 21 wins in a row would also rank as the longest winning streak in school history and garner Carolina its highest national rank ever at #2. At 21-0 on the year, the hottest team in the country headed to Atlanta to open up Atlantic Coast Conference play with high hopes and big dreams.
It's always been funny to me how it takes a 10 or 15 game winning streak to get the attention of most people, but you lose three in a row and see how fast they start squawking. That is exactly what happened to the Heels, and before the losing was over, Carolina would find itself in an 0-4 ACC hole. Not exactly what everyone had hoped for.
The saying goes that the mark of a good team is how they respond to losing. Well, the response didn't come very quickly after the first couple of losses, but come it did. Carolina would beat NC State twice in a row in Chapel Hill and win a huge series against another team ranked second in the country (Clemson) the next weekend. So, the hole was virtually gone and the Heels were on a roll, just where they wanted to be.
It is a funny thing how history can repeat itself. The repetition was an unwanted occurrence as UNC faced off against defending ACC champion Wake Forest in Winston Salem. After throwing away a late game lead to drop game one, Carolina suffered at the hands of two exceptional games by the Deacons and were once again swept on the road. The trench was plowed again, and at 4-8 in the league, it seemed deeper than ever.
A favorite motto of the Carolina coaching staff is "An animal whose hooves are hardened by adversity can travel any road." In all honesty, Carolina had seen all it wanted of the hardening process and was ready to travel the winning road. A Boshamer Stadium sweep of the Maryland Terrapins would once again bring Carolina within a game of .500 in the league, but a hard fought series at Virginia in which Carolina lost two tough games to a very talented Cavalier squad would allow the break even point to allude the Heels for one more week.
Anyone who knows a thing about college athletics knows that there is no love lost between Duke and North Carolina in just about any sport. That rivalry may have boosted the Heels as they got their last shot at an ACC team on the road. The Tar Heels would sweep Duke on their home turf, forging above .500 in the ACC for the first time, and proving to themselves and everyone else that this team could still win on the road.
Two non-conference home wins later and he we are. The record shows 41 wins to 11 losses. The Tar Heels have been ranked in the top 15 every week since early February, and with only four remaining regular season games seem a lock to finish in the nation's top 20 and earn an NCAA tournament bid once again. The Diamond Heels also have the distinction of being one of only three schools in the country to have 40 wins through May 2, 2000. That honor is shared with South Carolina and Florida State, teams ranked #1 and #2 respectively in the country.
A final non-ACC game at Liberty is the lone roadblock before Carolina breaks a week for exams, and then the Seminoles loom to close out the regular season. You can bet that FSU head coach Mike Martin isn't taking the three game set in Chapel Hill lightly. He knows that two fields in the ACC have been the hardest places for visitors to win this season. One of those is his own in Tallahassee. The other sits nestled under the Carolina pines surrounded by a stadium named for Cary Boshamer in a quaint little town called Chapel Hill.
So, fasten your seatbelt, and hold on tight, the stretch run for the Heels is sure to be anything but dull. A series win over the Seminoles could very well mean the boys in blue will play in "The Bosh" for the first round of NCAA tournament games, and their penchant for winning at home makes that all the more enticing. Rest assured that the hooves are hardened, and the adversity has been overcome. The winning road has been found 41 times already, and the Tar Heels have the map all figured out.
