University of North Carolina Athletics
Photo by: Jeffrey A. Camarati
Lucas: The Aftermath
June 3, 2024 | Baseball, Featured Writers, Adam Lucas
Carolina baseball has been celebrating on the Boshamer field for almost two full decades, and it never gets old.
By Adam Lucas
Sure, there was a press conference.
That's where Scott Forbes and several players stood in front of the media and very calmly and coolly recounted what had just happened inside Boshamer Stadium, and how Carolina had vanquished LSU 4-3 in ten innings.
They provided great insight, and went through all the key plays, and…
It wasn't nearly as much fun as what had happened on the field and in the dugout as soon as the game ended.
All the days in the weight room, all those freezing cold scrimmages in January, all the early season bus rides after a long Wednesday game—you try to excel in every single one of those just so you can have the moments on the Boshamer Stadium turf immediately after Carolina's regional championship win.
You get to do it on your field. Your family is there. The fans in the first row are spraying you with water. Forbes came back into the dugout for the first time just a couple of minutes after shaking hands with the LSU coaching staff and celebrating with his team.
He took a huge, deep breath. "How," he asked, "did we do that?"
But just as quickly, he answered his own question.
"That was our team to a T," he said. "Everybody doing something. Finding a way to win."
Remember: this team is already down two Friday night starters, with Jake Knapp and Folger Boaz out with injuries. None of the current three members of the weekend rotation was available for regular work on Monday; Friday starter Jason DeCaro gave the Tar Heels a gutsy two innings.
And yet, the mound performance was incredible. Matthew Matthijs went 4.1 innings and allowed just two hits, long enough to hand the ball to Dalton Pence, who swaggered in and fired 3.2 innings of shutout baseball, buzzing through the dangerous top of the Tiger order in the tenth to protect the slim one-run lead.
As the Tar Heels celebrated all over the field, the architect of the pitching staff, Bryant Gaines, hugged everyone in sight. And then…he sat down on the bench, exhaled and just watched the celebration. What else could he do?
"2006, 2007, 2008…" said baseball sport administrator Larry Gallo, who has seen every one of those regionals and many more in his long career in the Tar Heel athletic department. "I don't know if I've ever seen a better game."
The Carolina pitchers were great just long enough to let the Tar Heel bats awaken. Trailing 3-2, regional Most Outstanding Player Gavin Gallaher started the ninth inning rally with a double off LSU ace Gage Jump, who had been brought in specifically to shut the Tar Heels down. Colby Wilkerson, who grew up a Tar Heel fan indoctrinated by his Tar Heel family, came through with a clutch one-out single to tie the game.
On a team of stars, Wilkerson bats ninth, plays a steady shortstop…and is exactly the type of player every team that makes a deep run has in the lineup. Gage Jump transferred to LSU from UCLA and was the number five prospect nationally as a high schooler.
Colby Wilkerson is from Henderson, committed to Carolina out of high school, and said he committed to the Tar Heels because he wants to win a national championship in Chapel Hill.
That was his grandmother in the bedazzled number-three Carolina blue jersey, the one that says "COLBY" on the back. After the game, after Alex Madera had come through with a 3-2, two-out RBI single to give the Heels the lead they would not relinquish, she was sitting on the Boshamer steps waiting for her ride. "Call me GaGa," she said. "That's how everyone knows me."
GaGa was like the rest of us—she was exhausted but also exhilarated. She leaned very close to tell you about what happened when her grandson tied the game in the ninth inning. "My husband and I high fived," she said. "And we may have kissed a couple of times."
That's OK, GaGa. Because there may have been a lot of kissing in a very rowdy Boshamer Stadium on Monday night—and not all those participants had met before Monday, I'm guessing. We aren't ready for the Carolina sports year to be over just yet. Luckily, neither is this team, and they'll be back hosting the super regional against West Virginia next weekend. Who knows who might make the key play? It very well could be Vance Honeycutt or Casey Cook or Parks Harber, all the names you know. But keep in mind that on Monday night, Jackson Van De Brake scored the winning run. Johnny Castagnozzi caught a tough pop foul near the bricks behind first and started the tenth inning rally. Parker Haskin made a big block of a ball in the dirt that kept LSU runners from advancing.
Chapel Hill has been hosting regionals in this format since 2006. The only one that would have an argument to be as wild as this one was the 2013 version, when the Tar Heels won a bonkers 12-11 game against Florida Atlantic in 13 innings.
No offense to Florida Atlantic. But they aren't LSU, aren't the defending national champions, and didn't bring a legion of proud purple-clad Tiger fans to Chapel Hill.
The postseason weekend this actually felt the most like was in 2007, when Carolina beat South Carolina two games to one in the super regionals. The finale was the last game in the "old" Boshamer Stadium, because it was due to be renovated over the course of the next year.
That night, no one wanted to leave. Kids ran around the bases. Families scooped up dirt. Players posed for pictures. Seventeen years later, some of those very same people were in the very same spot celebrating a victory. Those kids who happily ran the bases are in college now. They are smarter and taller and cooler than we ever imagined way back then.
And some of the coaches are the same, too. Scott Forbes was in just his second year back on the UNC coaching staff, working as the pitching coach and doing whatever he could to get the game to Dalton Pence…er, Andrew Carignan, because once that happened you knew the Tar Heels had the victory.
Chad Flack was a junior on that 2007 team. It was his home run against Alabama in the 2006 super regional that changed the Carolina baseball world. So, of course, he was on the field celebrating Monday night's win, too.
He has seen almost everything in Tar Heel baseball. He went to Omaha three times. He won two regionals in Chapel Hill, one in Cary, and three super regionals in three different locations.
He watched the current players celebrate. Nineteen seasons Carolina baseball has been having these moments on this field. Nineteen years of wins and occasional losses and hugs and, well, family. If you'd walked straight out of 2006 and straight into 2024, you still would've seen numerous familiar faces, and you would've been greeted with big hugs, and Forbes would still grab you and scream, "Woooooooo!"
Flack saw all that. He has lived it for most of his entire life.
"And this," he said, "never gets old."
Sure, there was a press conference.
That's where Scott Forbes and several players stood in front of the media and very calmly and coolly recounted what had just happened inside Boshamer Stadium, and how Carolina had vanquished LSU 4-3 in ten innings.
They provided great insight, and went through all the key plays, and…
It wasn't nearly as much fun as what had happened on the field and in the dugout as soon as the game ended.
All the days in the weight room, all those freezing cold scrimmages in January, all the early season bus rides after a long Wednesday game—you try to excel in every single one of those just so you can have the moments on the Boshamer Stadium turf immediately after Carolina's regional championship win.
You get to do it on your field. Your family is there. The fans in the first row are spraying you with water. Forbes came back into the dugout for the first time just a couple of minutes after shaking hands with the LSU coaching staff and celebrating with his team.
He took a huge, deep breath. "How," he asked, "did we do that?"
But just as quickly, he answered his own question.
"That was our team to a T," he said. "Everybody doing something. Finding a way to win."
Remember: this team is already down two Friday night starters, with Jake Knapp and Folger Boaz out with injuries. None of the current three members of the weekend rotation was available for regular work on Monday; Friday starter Jason DeCaro gave the Tar Heels a gutsy two innings.
And yet, the mound performance was incredible. Matthew Matthijs went 4.1 innings and allowed just two hits, long enough to hand the ball to Dalton Pence, who swaggered in and fired 3.2 innings of shutout baseball, buzzing through the dangerous top of the Tiger order in the tenth to protect the slim one-run lead.
As the Tar Heels celebrated all over the field, the architect of the pitching staff, Bryant Gaines, hugged everyone in sight. And then…he sat down on the bench, exhaled and just watched the celebration. What else could he do?
"2006, 2007, 2008…" said baseball sport administrator Larry Gallo, who has seen every one of those regionals and many more in his long career in the Tar Heel athletic department. "I don't know if I've ever seen a better game."
The Carolina pitchers were great just long enough to let the Tar Heel bats awaken. Trailing 3-2, regional Most Outstanding Player Gavin Gallaher started the ninth inning rally with a double off LSU ace Gage Jump, who had been brought in specifically to shut the Tar Heels down. Colby Wilkerson, who grew up a Tar Heel fan indoctrinated by his Tar Heel family, came through with a clutch one-out single to tie the game.
On a team of stars, Wilkerson bats ninth, plays a steady shortstop…and is exactly the type of player every team that makes a deep run has in the lineup. Gage Jump transferred to LSU from UCLA and was the number five prospect nationally as a high schooler.
Colby Wilkerson is from Henderson, committed to Carolina out of high school, and said he committed to the Tar Heels because he wants to win a national championship in Chapel Hill.
That was his grandmother in the bedazzled number-three Carolina blue jersey, the one that says "COLBY" on the back. After the game, after Alex Madera had come through with a 3-2, two-out RBI single to give the Heels the lead they would not relinquish, she was sitting on the Boshamer steps waiting for her ride. "Call me GaGa," she said. "That's how everyone knows me."
GaGa was like the rest of us—she was exhausted but also exhilarated. She leaned very close to tell you about what happened when her grandson tied the game in the ninth inning. "My husband and I high fived," she said. "And we may have kissed a couple of times."
That's OK, GaGa. Because there may have been a lot of kissing in a very rowdy Boshamer Stadium on Monday night—and not all those participants had met before Monday, I'm guessing. We aren't ready for the Carolina sports year to be over just yet. Luckily, neither is this team, and they'll be back hosting the super regional against West Virginia next weekend. Who knows who might make the key play? It very well could be Vance Honeycutt or Casey Cook or Parks Harber, all the names you know. But keep in mind that on Monday night, Jackson Van De Brake scored the winning run. Johnny Castagnozzi caught a tough pop foul near the bricks behind first and started the tenth inning rally. Parker Haskin made a big block of a ball in the dirt that kept LSU runners from advancing.
Chapel Hill has been hosting regionals in this format since 2006. The only one that would have an argument to be as wild as this one was the 2013 version, when the Tar Heels won a bonkers 12-11 game against Florida Atlantic in 13 innings.
No offense to Florida Atlantic. But they aren't LSU, aren't the defending national champions, and didn't bring a legion of proud purple-clad Tiger fans to Chapel Hill.
The postseason weekend this actually felt the most like was in 2007, when Carolina beat South Carolina two games to one in the super regionals. The finale was the last game in the "old" Boshamer Stadium, because it was due to be renovated over the course of the next year.
That night, no one wanted to leave. Kids ran around the bases. Families scooped up dirt. Players posed for pictures. Seventeen years later, some of those very same people were in the very same spot celebrating a victory. Those kids who happily ran the bases are in college now. They are smarter and taller and cooler than we ever imagined way back then.
And some of the coaches are the same, too. Scott Forbes was in just his second year back on the UNC coaching staff, working as the pitching coach and doing whatever he could to get the game to Dalton Pence…er, Andrew Carignan, because once that happened you knew the Tar Heels had the victory.
Chad Flack was a junior on that 2007 team. It was his home run against Alabama in the 2006 super regional that changed the Carolina baseball world. So, of course, he was on the field celebrating Monday night's win, too.
He has seen almost everything in Tar Heel baseball. He went to Omaha three times. He won two regionals in Chapel Hill, one in Cary, and three super regionals in three different locations.
He watched the current players celebrate. Nineteen seasons Carolina baseball has been having these moments on this field. Nineteen years of wins and occasional losses and hugs and, well, family. If you'd walked straight out of 2006 and straight into 2024, you still would've seen numerous familiar faces, and you would've been greeted with big hugs, and Forbes would still grab you and scream, "Woooooooo!"
Flack saw all that. He has lived it for most of his entire life.
"And this," he said, "never gets old."
Players Mentioned
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