Lucas: Super Regional Brings Rare Visitor

By Adam Lucas

When Southern Cal takes the field at Boshamer Stadium on Friday afternoon for game one of the best-of-three super-regional, they'll do so as a bit of an anomaly.

Carolina has played 1,670 baseball games this century. Approximately three percent of them have been against teams from the west coast.

That's true even as the college baseball world has shrunk over the last five years or so. Stanford and Cal are now inexplicably conference series for the Tar Heels. Marquee early-season events sometimes provide unique intersectional matchups.

But there are still far too many available good opponents within the boundaries of the state and region for Carolina to look to the other side of the country for regular foes. Finances matter, too. It's a little easier to load the bus for a trip to Elon than it is to gas up the jet (Carolina flew commercial to and from Cal this year) for a nonconference game against, say, Cal Poly.

Carolina's encounters with west coast teams have often been in the postseason. In 2021, the season ended with a loss to UCLA in the Lubbock Regional. The 2018 team beat Oregon State in Omaha but then lost the rematch to end the year. The 2014 season ended with a pair of losses to Long Beach State, and Carolina won a terrific super-regional against Stanford in 2011.

The last meetings with USC came in 2011 and 2012—the Tar Heels visited the Trojans' early-season event in 2011 and beat them 11-7, then hosted them for a three-game series in 2012 and won two of three.

You want a major throwback? From 1989-1993, Carolina hosted an in-season tournament known as the Carolina Invitational. The goal was to bring some of the premier programs in the country to Boshamer Stadium. Southern Cal made a pair of trips to that event; Carolina lost to the Trojans 4-2 in 1990 and lost 10-1 in 1993.

In many ways, that event was the forerunner of some of today's early-season nonconference events…with one big exception. The Carolina Invitational was held after the ACC Tournament, on the open weekend before the NCAA Tournament began in late May. In 1993, for example, Carolina took the loss to Southern Cal, and then four days later opened NCAA Tournament play in Lubbock against Hawaii.

Yes, the college baseball world was a little different then.

None of that history will matter tomorrow at 3 p.m. Southern Cal arrives as one of the hottest teams in the country, boasting a pair of excellent starting pitchers in Mason Edwards and Grant Govel, plus an offense that looked rejuvenated in the College Station Regional, averaging over 14 hits per game.

Many of the season-long numbers on the Trojans were temporarily wiped away last weekend in the College Station regional. USC lost their regional opener 5-4 to Texas State, continuing some concerns about their offense, but then exploded for 55 runs over the next four games to advance. The Trojans have only three quad one wins on the season, but after earning just one during the regular season, they picked up two in defeating Texas A&M twice last weekend. They had also won just three games away from Dedeaux Field since March 31…but then went out and won four in College Station.

So the team that has already arrived in the Triangle area—Andy Stankiewicz's team came to Chapel Hill straight from College Station rather than returning home and then flying back across the country—has different credentials than the one that played most of the regular season. They still have elite pitching, but they've answered some of the other year-long concerns.

Some of the previous bugaboos that used to frustrate Carolina against west coast teams have been legislated out of the game. Oregon State's glacial pace of play wouldn't work in the pitch clock era. But despite the big numbers in College Station, USC does play a smaller game than the Tar Heels. The Trojans laid down 36 sacrifice bunts this season and all the regular starters have at least one (even while putting up big offensive numbers in College Stations, USC still sacrifice bunted six times); Carolina has just 15, and Carter French and Tyler Howe account for 12 of those.

This year's Tar Heels, though, are well-qualified to handle balls in play. They're fielding .982, which would be a program record, and have turned 56 double plays, which ranks fourth in the country. In a series where the USC pitching might have a slight edge and the Carolina offense might possess slightly better season-long consistency, those defensive skills will need to be a difference-maker.

Scoreboard Slider

University of North Carolina Athletics

Related News

Players Mentioned

Carter French

Tyler Howe

Related Videos