When the UNC baseball team is finally able to open its regular season in the coming days, it will mark the first time in 22 seasons the Tar Heels will be without former head coach Mike Fox.
With a familiar face in longtime assistant Scott Forbes set to begin his tenure, the team’s goals still remain the same.
Forbes was right by Fox’s side for the last 20 seasons in Chapel Hill, a period which included seven College World Series appearances.
The most recent of those trips to Omaha came in 2018. A handful of players from that team remain on this year’s roster, including pitchers Joey Lancellotti and Caden O’Brien.
The Tar Heels will sorely miss the bat of former designated hitter Aaron Sabato, however, after he was selected by the Minnesota Twins in the first round of last year’s MLB Draft. UNC still has plenty of talent, but was not ranked in any of the major preseason polls this year and was selected by the league’s head coaches to finish fifth in the ACC Coastal Division.
It also remains to be seen how Forbes will adjust to the head coaching role, but he told reporters during the team’s media day on Monday that the transition has been fairly seamless to this point—with one notable exception that forced the postponement of this weekend’s opening series against Kentucky.
“Honestly, the only odd thing has been COVID,” Forbes said. “Just dealing with all the extra things that we have to take care of. What the players have to do, and the testing protocols. The reality that something like this can happen.
“You know, you’re all ready and you’ve been working on Kentucky then all of a sudden they call and they can’t come,” he added. “But I’ve been here a long time. And it really hasn’t been that much different except for managing those type of things.”
Despite the preseason projections, the vibes from inside the locker room suggest the Tar Heels have no plans of going through a rebuilding phase.
Forbes was hired for his success as an assistant and his familiarity with the program, having served as the hitting coach, the pitching coach and the recruiting coordinator. He’ll also have three assistants under his guidance that each played at UNC in Bryant Gaines, Jesse Wierzbicki and Jason Howell.
Sophomore shortstop Danny Serretti—who has been among the Tar Heels’ top offensive performers in each of the last two seasons—said that not much has changed from the players’ perspective.
“Obviously, we love Coach Fox and we miss Coach Fox,” Serretti said. “We’ve seen him around the stadium a little bit. But nothing really changes. We have still the same goals in mind. And Coach Forbes has been here for, like, as long as I’ve been alive—so he knows how things are supposed to go.”
They play the games for a reason, so only time will tell if this year’s group of Tar Heels can live up to the program’s lofty expectations. For now, though, it’s just business as normal until the team finally gets to open the season for real.
A three-game series this weekend against James Madison was scheduled Tuesday as a replacement for the Kentucky series. First pitch is scheduled for Friday at 3 p.m.
When that time comes, Forbes said, is when reality will really start to sink in.
“I’d say the most emotional side would be when the first pitch is thrown, when it really hits me that I’m the head coach,” Forbes said. “Because I still don’t think, at times, it has. And I’m sure it will. That’ll be a very humble reminder of how lucky I am. The opportunity doesn’t come to many people to be a head coach at a place like this.”
