After a demoralizing sweep at the hands of Virginia in late April, the Diamond Heels seemed to be at rock bottom.
The first two games of the weekend series were close: a 4-2 loss on Friday night followed by an 11-7 loss in 10 innings the next day. Saturday perhaps summed up just how tough the past few weeks had been for the team: Carolina and Virginia went into extras tied at 4-4, before the Tar Heels scored three runs in the top of the 10th to take the lead. A UNC victory in sight, all the Cavaliers did was score seven runs in their half of the 10th, capped off by a walk-off grand slam.
Utterly demoralized, the Tar Heels dropped the final game of the series in a 10-3 blowout, returning to Chapel Hill with their tails firmly between their legs. An 18-3 start had given way to a 23-17 bottoming out. UNC was likely on the outside looking in for the NCAA Tournament.
Pitcher Brandon Schaeffer, who started the Saturday loss, called the series “our lowest point of the season.”
“We knew what we were capable of doing,” he said. “And that Virginia series kind of fired us up. We got together as a team after that and said, ‘All right, enough is enough.'”
“We just talked about being more fundamentally sound,” said head coach Scott Forbes. “Trying to be a little bit tougher. But also, using that adversity to help us. And understand that baseball is a momentum-based game. If you get hot down the stretch, all that adversity and all those tough losses will only help you.”
The annual spring exam break seemed to come at a perfect time. After a midweek win over Liberty (who had beaten the Tar Heels earlier in the season), Carolina used its rare weekend off to regroup. Since that point, the team has won 14 of 16 games, taken series from NC State, Wake Forest and Florida State, and won the ACC Tournament. All of that has rocketed the team back into the national conversation and earned them the No. 10 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament, meaning Chapel Hill will host at least a regional. Postseason baseball will be back at Boshamer Stadium, after it appeared unlikely the team would even be playing into June at all.
“They never quit during that tough stretch,” Forbes said. “And you just had to think that something good was gonna happen to this group.”
Schaeffer has been one of the keys to the team’s early summer renaissance. The junior college transfer has registered wins in each of his last three starts, going at least 6.2 innings in each and throwing a complete-game shutout against then-No. 2 Virginia Tech in the ACC Tournament.
Brandon Schaeffer’s start against Virginia Tech was UNC’s best pitching performance of the season. (Image via UNC Baseball on Twitter)
“We really have not experienced a defeat like that, since really all I can remember,” Hokies head coach John Szefc said after the game.
“They say hitting’s contagious… I think it’s the same thing for pitching,” Schaeffer said. “To see guys coming out of the [bullpen] doing really well, and starting to get some more length out of the starters. Everybody throwing the ball better, I think it just picks the next guy up.”
The team has also developed a rock-solid top half of the batting order, with the quintet of Angel Zarate, Vance Honeycutt, Danny Serretti, Mac Horvath and Alberto Osuna each providing key hits during the last month. Forbes specifically pointed to Osuna’s walk-off three-run home run against Florida State in the final series of the season as a critical moment.
“Ever since, this group, you can see the belief,” Forbes said. “And you can tell that they’re not afraid to play anybody.”
Serretti and Zarate are first and second on the team in batting average (.370 and .357, respectively), while Horvath, Osuna and Honeycutt have combined to hit 56 of the team’s 86 home runs. Four of Honeycutt’s 21 long balls came in the ACC Tournament, and the freshman outfielder took home MVP honors for his performance.
Freshman Vance Honeycutt is the first UNC player with 20 home runs and 20 stolen bases in a single season in team history. (Image via Associated Press/Chris Carlson)
On the way home from Charlotte, Forbes said he received congratulatory texts and voicemails from several UNC head coaches past and present, including Mack Brown and Roy Williams. According to Forbes, the messages interrupted what was a raucous karaoke session on the team bus.
“I’m getting a text message from Coach Williams, and it still blows my mind,” he said. “He’s a friend, but I don’t look at him as a friend, I look at him as Coach Williams, a Hall of Famer and a mentor.”
But it was Forbes’ friendship with the current head coach of the men’s basketball program which he credited for helping turn the Diamond Heels around. Indeed, Hubert Davis’ first season leading the Tar Heels bears some striking resemblances to Forbes’ second. Early national conversation petered out during a midseason swoon, only to fire back up again after the team surged into the postseason.
“Coach Davis and I go way back, and he’s a good friend of mine” Forbes said. “He just kept saying, ‘I remind the guys to keep their eyes forward, eliminate the distractions. Don’t get on social media, don’t listen to what all the naysayers are saying. What we are saying is what is most important.'”
The team’s hot streak has also seen the birth of a new team hashtag on social media: #FreakinAwesome. It’s a saying Forbes credits to the famously clean-mouthed Davis.
“We try to hold our guys accountable. There are a lot of young kids at all of our games,” Forbes said. “I think it’s important that… our language is good.”
As for the phrase itself, Forbes claimed to not recall saying it at all. Friends, family members and teammates remember differently.
“My wife said, ‘You do say that all the time,'” Forbes said. “But I’m glad [the team] took it and ran with it. Because they’re having a blast.”
With their two programs so closely intertwined, Forbes can only hope his team’s NCAA Tournament run mirrors Davis’.
Except for the final freakin’ game, that is.
Featured image via UNC Athletic Communications/Helen McGinnis
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