Baseball Title Quest
North Carolina Seeks First Baseball National Title in College World Series Finals Against Oklahoma
North Carolina will chase its first-ever national championship in baseball when it faces Oklahoma in the College World Series finals, opening Saturday night in Omaha. The Tar Heels have made 13 trips to Omaha without a title. Now they get another shot. AP reports the best-of-three series tips off at 8:00 PM ET on ESPN, with Game 2 Sunday on ABC.
Both teams went a perfect 3-0 in bracket play to reach the finals. North Carolina enters as the No. 5 national seed with a 53-12-1 record. Oklahoma came in unranked after finishing 11th in the SEC, but nobody is counting out the Sooners now, according to SportsLine.
Two Very Different Roads Lead to Omaha
North Carolina got here the hard way and the steady way. The Tar Heels have been a Top 5 program all season. They beat Ole Miss 6-2 to open CWS play, then rolled past West Virginia 12-7 to punch their finals ticket, GoHeels.com reported. It is their first finals appearance since 2007.
Oklahoma's path was far messier — and then suddenly dominant. The Sooners earned an at-large bid after a rough SEC regular season. But once the postseason started, they caught fire. They opened the CWS by shutting out No. 7 Alabama 9-0, then eliminated Georgia to reach the finals, News 9 reported. They have outscored opponents by a wide margin along the way.
Oklahoma's Home Run Surge Is the Story of the Postseason
Oklahoma's power hitting has been stunning. The Sooners hit 91 home runs this season. Forty-three of those came in their last 16 games, according to Just Baseball. That is nearly half their season total crammed into the final stretch. Outfielder Trey Gambill has been a primary force in that surge.
Freshman pitcher Cord Rager has been just as impressive on the mound. Rager has not allowed a single run in his last 13 innings of tournament play, SportsLine noted. That kind of pitching from a freshman is a major reason analysts are not treating Oklahoma like a true underdog.
UNC's Ace and a Season Built on Consistency
North Carolina will likely start Jason DeCaro in Game 1. The right-hander carries an 11-2 record and a 2.31 ERA — eighth best in the country, per SportsLine. Center fielder Owen Hull has been "sizzling" at the plate since the Super Regionals. Second baseman Gavin Gallaher recently won a Rawlings Gold Glove for his elite defense.
The Tar Heels have been almost impossible to beat in stretches. They have lost back-to-back games only once all season, SportsLine reported. Their on-base percentage sits at .413, which ranks in the top 10 nationally. The team is also 28-0 in games started by freshman pitcher Caden Glauber, according to Just Baseball.
Old Friends Coach Against Each Other for the Title
There is a personal twist to this matchup. UNC coach Scott Forbes and Oklahoma coach Skip Johnson are longtime friends. At the pre-series press conference, Forbes joked about the rivalry: "I always thought if we met up together, we'd be hunting. Oh, they're hunting together all right," he said, per AP. Johnson shot back: "You thought we were going to fight?"
The stakes could not be higher for both programs. A UNC win would finally remove the "best program never to win a title" label and cement Forbes' legacy. For Oklahoma, a title would validate their move to the SEC and prove that peaking in June matters more than where you finish in March. North Carolina is favored at -172 on FanDuel, per SportsLine.
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