Lucas: Step One

By Adam Lucas

OMAHA—It ends here.

Florida State outscored Carolina 9-5 on Tuesday in Omaha, ending the Tar Heels' stay at the College World Series. The loss ends a remarkable 48-16 season, almost certainly the dazzling Tar Heel career of Vance Honeycutt, and the 2023-24 UNC sports year.

A combination of some offensive struggles and uncharacteristic free passes on the mound were too much to overcome against one of the strongest fields in CWS history. Somehow, they got here even after losing two Friday night starters to injury; pitchers Jake Knapp and Folger Boaz would have been welcome additions in Omaha.

Winning the entire event was the 2024 team's goal, and they'll go home without accomplishing it. Establishing Carolina back in Omaha was the program's goal—and that one has been achieved.

You have to get here to fully understand what you're missing when the season ends short of the College World Series. Scott Forbes and Bryant Gaines and Jesse Wierzbicki and Brandon Riley and Jason Howell could tell the players all about it. Collectively, they've made well over a dozen trips to Omaha. But it's those extensive Omaha credentials that taught them it has to be experienced in person.

No normal human would believe you when you tell them that Omaha, Nebraska is the greatest place in the world to spend the month of June. This is not an exaggeration: I went into a store earlier this week to buy postcards. One of them had a giant ear of corn on it, one of them had an enormous tractor, and another featured an empty field.

This, folks, is Nebraska. Ain't it great?

It really is.

I don't know what the people of Omaha are like the other 50 weeks of the year, but for these dozen days every summer, they turn this place into a dream destination. They are welcoming without being pushy. Friendly without being overbearing. Everywhere you went in town this week, someone wanted to talk about the games, and specifically about the Tar Heels, a local favorite. The people here make the event a big deal but they don't make themselves a big deal.

Carolina has a healthy history here, and that matters in a place like this. The locals appreciate it if you appreciate them, and anyone who has been here from Rosenblatt to Charles Schwab—as the Tar Heels have—appreciates it.

Multiple members of the traveling party paid homage to Rosenblatt this week by making a quick visit. There isn't much left, but there's enough to remember what it felt like getting off the highway and seeing the stadium perched on the hill, and the fans lined up for the bleacher seats, and the parking lots full of tailgaters.

Across the street, Greg Pivovar is still sitting at the front door of Stadium View Sports Cards. He offers every customer of legal age a beer, and has since the store opened in 1992. The sign on the door reads:

"Some people say 75,000 beers is a lot to give away.

"I say, don't make me drink the next 5,000 alone!"

This is Omaha.

Walking around the remnants of Rosenblatt, there was a family playing wiffle ball on the Infield at the Zoo, which features surviving seats and bricks and details from the old stadium. They weren't playing to win, they were just tossing the ball, hitting it (and occasionally missing it) and running as fast as they could. I heard them before I could see them, and it somehow sounded just like another Robert Woodard strikeout or Chad Flack homer or Tim Federowicz grand slam.

The Tar Heels were in danger of letting those memories become a little too vintage, like the old tradition of lowering a defeated team's flag outside Rosenblatt to half-mast. Watching some footage from his CWS appearances last week, Flack jokingly said, "Is there any way we could make this look a little more current?"

This team gave Carolina what's most important: currency. Now there's a discussion to be had about the most reliable Tar Heel hitter in the College World Series—Dustin Ackley or Vance Honeycutt? The comeback against Virginia now goes on the list of all-time UNC postseason wins.

Rosenblatt is gone and it isn't coming back. But it might not have to, because somehow—amidst the Jell-O shots and the corporate champions and the shinier stadium—they've preserved at least some of it. And Carolina is now firmly a part of that new iteration of the event, with four appearances at the new stadium.

And, most importantly, they have a core that now understands why it matters to get here. Freshmen like Gavin Gallaher and Luke Stevenson and Jason DeCaro have played thousands of baseball games. They've played in major league parks. They've played with and against some of the very best players in the country throughout high school and travel ball. It's hard to impress them.

So the Tar Heels needed this week, this experience, to help them understand why this event is different.

"It didn't hit me until I was walking back from the bullpen with Jason before the Virginia game," Stevenson said. "From the outfield to the dugout, that was a really special moment. It's something I'll never forget. It's awesome here. It's better than I expected."

They ate a whiskey filet at The Drover. They signed autographs. They walked through the Old Market. And now they understand big things, like the sound of 24,000 people at the first pitch of Game 1. But also little things, like why those regular season wins matter so much to provide you with home games in June.

If you get here once, you want to come back. That's true whether you're a player or a former player. Dozens of former Tar Heel lettermen were in Omaha this weekend, and the ones who couldn't be here tried to be present in spirit—several Diamond Heels in the major leagues funded numerous rounds at Rocco's for their former teammates and other Carolina fans.

It's now been factually established that Scott Forbes can get a team he exclusively built to Omaha. Sure, he had been there seven times as an assistant. This was different. This was a head coach taking his team—his program—to the highest level of the game. He navigated a new recruiting world, a new NIL marketplace, some differences in the sport no one could have anticipated, damaging injuries, and still managed to guide the Tar Heels to the eight best teams in the country.

This was his fourth season as head coach but also his best season. Not just because of the results, but because of how he figured out what works for him.

"I made a ton of mistakes in the beginning," he says. "During COVID, I learned how important it was to look at things through the lens of what the kids are going through. It was a tough time for them. And that taught me my job is to build relationships with every single one of these kids individually. That's how I will get the most out of them and maximize their potential from the baseball standpoint.

"My biggest mistake was being distracted by all the stuff a head coach has to do instead of being focused first on the players. My job is to prepare them and help them be successful. All that other stuff, I make time for away from the stadium or close the door to my office when no one is here and don't let it affect me as the leader of the program."

That's a head coach.

There are many more wins to come, and of course the on-field success is great.

But his team also did something just as important: they made the entire fan base sad the season is over. When the season ends in Terre Haute or Lubbock, it doesn't create the same attachment. The 2024 Tar Heels captured Chapel Hill in a way that hasn't happened since many of these players didn't have driver's licenses. Having someone to cheer for and games to look forward to into mid-June—especially games like these, which so frequently were heart-pounding—energizes a fan base. Dinners were rearranged. Tickets were treasures. Strangers were hugged.

It feels very much like 2006, like we just saw the beginning of something bigger. This team will leave Omaha happy with what they accomplished, but also desperate to get back. It is so, so hard to win this event. But this last week was a reminder of just how incredible it would be to do it.

So, yes, the 2024 season ends here. But as for the rest of it?

It starts here.

Scoreboard Slider

University of North Carolina Athletics

Players Mentioned

Folger Boaz

Jason DeCaro

Gavin Gallaher

Vance Honeycutt

Jake Knapp

Luke Stevenson

Related Videos