University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: The Road To 200 Wins
June 3, 2008 | Baseball, Featured Writers, Adam Lucas
June 3, 2008
By Adam Lucas
This weekend's regional title moved Carolina into the super-regionals for the third straight year, but it also marked another milestone: on Saturday, the members of this year's senior class captured their 200th victory.
That group--which includes Mike Facchinei, Chad Flack, Kyle Shelton, Tyler Trice, Seth Williams, and Rob Wooten (he redshirted in 2004)--has shattered the mark for career victories as a Tar Heel. When they enrolled, the record for wins by a four-year class was the 162 victories achieved by the graduating class of 2003. How badly did this year's class break that mark? They picked up their 163rd win back on March 12 against Virginia Commonwealth.
What follows are five of the key wins (and one key loss) on the path to 200:
June 5, 2005: Notre Dame 3, Carolina 0
This desultory NCAA Tournament defeat marked the Tar Heels' fifth loss in their final six games and was the only time in the current senior class's career that they failed to make it to the super-regionals.
It also was an example of how they didn't want the remainder of their careers to finish. "It's not so much the winning that has changed," Flack says. "It's the brotherhood...The big thing that team taught us was that negative things can catch on. If someone says something negative, you have to settle it before it spreads to six other people and then to the whole team. You can create a bond through a team by being positive."
How important was that realization and the subsequent shift in the clubhouse mood?
"The class we brought in in 2005 are the ones who turned this program around...They've changed the program from the inside out," Mike Fox says.
April 1, 2006: Carolina 4, Florida State 3
To appreciate this victory, you first have to go back to 2005, when the Seminoles had handed the Tar Heels three heartbreaking victories, including one on a walk-off three-run home run, one in 11 innings, and one in 12 innings in the ACC Tournament on a throwing error. In all, FSU had won five straight against the Tar Heels (three of them in extra innings) before coming to Boshamer Stadium for a three-game weekend set.
Carolina took the first game behind a stellar performance from Andrew Miller. It looked like the `Noles would earn a split when they led Saturday's game 3-2 with two outs and nobody on base in the bottom of the ninth. But then Benji Johnson singled and the Seminoles committed back-to-back errors--the second of which came on a simple infield pop fly that fell between three defenders--to set up Josh Horton's game-winning single.
The win was nice. But the way it happened provided a sense that some of the bad luck of the past had finally turned.
June 10, 2006: Carolina 8, Alabama 7
It's pretty simple. This was one of the best games, in any sport, in Carolina athletics history.
It had everything. It had national importance (the winner of this super-regional earned a berth in the College World Series). It had late-inning heroics from both sides. And it had a walk-off home run that elevated Tar Heel baseball from a fringe sport with a handful of hardcore fans to a firm spot among Chapel Hill's sports royalty.
The sellout crowd of 5,420 in Tuscaloosa went from depressed (when Chad Flack hit a three-run homer in the bottom of the eighth that appeared to be the game-winner) to ecstatic (when Alex Avila hit what appeared to then be the game-winner in the top of the ninth) to stunned (when Flack did it again with a two-run homer to end the game). By themselves, any of the three potential game-winning plays would have been memorable. Put together, they were epic.
June 16, 2006: Carolina 7, Cal State Fullerton 5 (13 innings)
It would have been easy to relish a trip to the College World Series, soak up the sights and smells, and then lose two games and come home. This was the game that proved Carolina belonged with the nation's baseball powerhouses--and was in Omaha for more than just a token appearance.
It was the second-longest game in the 60-year history of the CWS, and it featured the Tar Heels wriggling out of an 11th inning that saw the perennial Omaha resident Titans somehow get five baserunners...yet fail to score a single run.
In the eleventh, two Fullerton hitters reached base on missed third strikes, but a timely pickoff move by Matt Danford to third base bailed Carolina out of almost certain defeat--and they still had to escape from a bases-loaded jam later in the inning in a contest where almost every pitch over the final two hours was tension-packed.
Josh Horton finally won the game in the 13th with an RBI single.
"Our kids hung in there and dodged a number of bullets big-time in extra innings," Fox said. "I'm not quite sure how they did it."
June 10, 2007: Carolina 9, South Carolina 4
Maybe Carolina baseball fans should hope for a lengthy rain storm that pushes this year's super-regional back to June 10. Good things seem to happen on that date.
The Diamond Heels had exorcised numerous demons over the previous two seasons: they'd struck back at Florida State, they'd won the ACC Tournament, and they'd been to the College World Series. But the Gamecocks--a program that ended Carolina's season for three straight years from 2002-04--still loomed.
Flack once again took center stage, hitting a tiebreaking two-run home run in the seventh inning one year to the day after his homer at Alabama. "It's hard to get back to the College World Series," Mike Fox said. "You've got to cherish it."
That's exactly what the players and their families did, lingering on the Boshamer Stadium field for over an hour after the game ended in the final contest played before stadium renovations dramatically remade the historic facility.
May 16, 2008: Carolina 10, Miami 6
Yes, the Tar Heels came back and won the series the next day with a 12-11 victory. But this was the big one.
One day earlier, the top-ranked Hurricanes had bashed their way to a 12-2 victory, battering Carolina ace Alex White and taking advantage of 11 walks. Miami hit better, pitched better, and generally looked better overall than the second-ranked Tar Heels. It was such a complete demolition that a series victory for the `Canes--a team that hadn't lost a home ACC series in over a year--looked like a foregone conclusion.
Someone forgot to tell Adam Warren. The Tar Heel junior righty pitched into the sixth inning, taking advantage of a pair of RBI doubles from Williams that helped stake Warren to a 9-0 lead. Wooten closed out the game, inducing a bases-loaded groundout to end the game.
Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly. He is also the author or co-author of four books on Carolina basketball.
