Two head coaches who each took the long road to the top of college baseball will face off starting Saturday, when North Carolina and Oklahoma meet in the Men’s College World Series Championship Series in Omaha, Nebraska.
North Carolina’s Scott Forbes and Oklahoma’s Skip Johnson both spent many years as assistants before earning their head coaching roles, and now their programs will square off in a best-of-three series for the national title.
Forbes spent years building his resume at North Carolina — serving as an assistant from 1999 to 2002, then as pitching coach from 2006 to 2016, and later as hitting coach beginning in 2017. He was part of the program during its championship series appearances in 2006 and 2007 before taking over as head coach following the 2020 season, replacing longtime coach Mike Fox.
Johnson, meanwhile, worked as pitching coach under legendary Texas head coach Augie Garrido from 2007 to 2016, then held the same role at Oklahoma for one season before being elevated to head coach.
Johnson said he recognizes a lot of common ground between his program and Forbes’ Tar Heels when it comes to team culture.
“Our culture is just trying to get everybody to buy into your culture,” Johnson said. “That’s the similarities I see in Scott and our program. You see it and you see the players when they regurgitate what our culture’s about.”
North Carolina is still searching for its first national championship. The Tar Heels have reached the championship series twice before — in 2006 and 2007 — but lost to Oregon State both times.
Oklahoma, on the other hand, is chasing its third title. The Sooners previously won the MCWS in 1951 and 1994. They also appeared in the 2022 championship series but were swept by Ole Miss.
North Carolina will send All-American pitcher Jason DeCaro to the mound for Game 1. The junior right-hander turned in a strong performance in the Tar Heels’ MCWS opener, going 6 2/3 innings and giving up just two runs on five hits in a 6-2 win over Ole Miss.
DeCaro said the team has been mentally preparing for the heightened intensity of a championship stage.
“Coach Forbes talked about it with us a little bit this week, about how there’s going to be some extra nerves,” DeCaro said. “You’re going to be a little bit more excited. This is the biggest game that we’ve all ever played in, so just accepting that and using that to your advantage.
“You’re going to go out there and you’re going to have some extra adrenaline,” he continued, “so just trying to do a good job of slowing yourself down, taking a deep breath, and just at the end of the day, focusing on each pitch.”
Oklahoma’s offense has been on fire throughout the postseason. The Sooners entered the NCAA Tournament with just 65 home runs on the season, but have slugged 26 more across their 10 tournament games — including five in Wednesday’s 11-4 victory over Georgia that punched their ticket to the championship series.
On the mound, Oklahoma is expected to start freshman left-hander Cord Rager. While Rager never pitched more than five innings in any of his 12 regular-season outings, he has gone at least six innings in each of his last three postseason starts. His best performance came in the Sooners’ MCWS opener on June 13, when he threw a season-high seven innings against Alabama, surrendering just three hits and no runs.
Rager’s rise has closely tracked his team’s remarkable late-season turnaround. Oklahoma dropped each of its final four Southeastern Conference series and was eliminated in the first round of the conference tournament, falling to LSU 6-2 on May 19.
But the unseeded Sooners turned things around in dramatic fashion — upsetting No. 2 seed Georgia Tech in regionals, sweeping Kansas in the super regionals, and reeling off eight straight wins heading into the championship series. The Sooners carry a 41-22 record and have used three different freshmen starters on the mound in Omaha.
“We’ve been through a lot,” Johnson said. “I think Trey (Gambill, a senior outfielder) said it best yesterday — we’ve been hit in the mouth. Played really good early in our year, and then we went through the SEC, and I think the SEC really molded us to be prepared to (be) where we’re at.”
North Carolina enters Saturday’s opener as the fifth seed with a 53-12-1 record and a five-game winning streak. The Tar Heels also boast one of the top freshman pitching arms in the country in right-hander Caden Glauber.
Forbes summed up his team’s mindset heading into the series: “You’ve got to go for it. You’ve got to live in the moment. You’ve got to go after every single pitch and not think about the end goal, just think about that current game and then Nick Saban process of just trying to dominate every play and every pitch.”
