North Carolina’s baseball program has never won a national title. That could change this weekend.
The Tar Heels are in the College World Series finals against Oklahoma, with the series reported June 20 — one matchup standing between UNC and the program’s first-ever NCAA baseball championship. Oklahoma arrived in Omaha running hot, and the Tar Heels have had to work through a field that whittled itself down to two.
The finals
North Carolina has reached the College World Series before, but a national title has stayed out of reach. This year’s finals put the Tar Heels back in that position — one series win from ending the drought. Oklahoma, for its part, isn’t a team that stumbled into the final round. The Sooners enter as one of the tournament’s sharpest clubs, and UNC will have to beat them straight up.
The series format means neither team needs a single loss to end the run — both sides still have room to absorb pressure. That doesn’t make the games any less loaded. For a program chasing its first championship, every inning in Omaha carries weight that a regular-season series simply doesn’t.
Whether UNC can close it out against an Oklahoma team that’s played some of its best baseball late in the tournament is the question the next few days will answer.
Reporting by the Chicago Tribune. Read the original report.
