Forbes Embraces NCAA Title Standard as UNC Chases Elusive Baseball Crown
By David Glenn
When Scott Forbes holds the first team meeting for his North Carolina baseball players each year, he lists the national championship among the group’s most prominent goals.
“That’s the standard here,” Forbes said during a recent interview on the David Glenn Show. “That’s what we’re trying to do.”
image via UNC Athletic Communications
Now Forbes and the Tar Heels once again have put themselves in position to return to the College World Series — where the program has been 12 times, including last year — and perhaps even take home the trophy for the first time.
The NCAA Baseball Championship bracket announced Monday declared UNC (42-12) the #5 national seed, behind four teams from the mighty Southeastern Conference: Vanderbilt (42-16), Texas (42-12), Arkansas (43-13) and Auburn (38-18). This year’s 64-team field includes a record 13 SEC squads, including eight of the 16 regional hosts.
As a top-eight national seed, the Tar Heels know they won’t have to leave the comfortable confines of Boshamer Stadium, where they’ve posted a stellar 25-6 record this season, in their pursuit of another trip to Omaha.
If the Heels can advance from this week’s four-team, double-elimination regional competition against Holy Cross, Nebraska and Oklahoma in Chapel Hill, they automatically will host the winner of the Eugene regional, where #12 Oregon is battling Arizona, Cal Poly and Utah Valley on the Ducks’ home field. UNC’s opener is Friday against Holy Cross (noon, ACC Network).
“I think North Carolina is a legitimate national championship contender,” said Daron Vaught, a college baseball analyst for D1Baseball.com and a co-host of the ACC Baseball Etc. podcast. “The balance of this UNC team — the pitching and defense have been very effective all season, and the hitting really came along during the course of the season — gradually has become extraordinary.
“Meanwhile, unlike in some other recent years, there’s not really a juggernaut team out there that you’d be afraid to face. Arkansas is maybe the most well-balanced team in the country, and several other SEC teams are also really good, but the Tar Heels are right there. They’re the #5 overall seed, after all, and they probably should have been seeded even a bit higher than that.”
Forbes, 50, is in his fifth season as UNC’s head coach. He originally arrived in Chapel Hill in 1999, as an assistant coach under legendary UNC leader Mike Fox, who led the Tar Heels to seven College World Series appearances in his 22 years (1999-2020) at the helm.
All seven of Fox’s CWS trips came with Forbes, his former player at North Carolina Wesleyan, on his staff. In 2006 and 2007, the Tar Heels advanced all the way to the championship game in Omaha before falling just short of the elusive NCAA title against Oregon State.
“I’ve been in the dugout twice, in the national championship games, and been that close (holds two fingers close together),” Forbes said. “I know how difficult it is.”
Fresh off his second ACC championship in the past four seasons, Forbes said he has been inspired by UNC’s broader athletic culture for decades.
When Forbes first arrived in Chapel Hill, the Tar Heels’ women’s soccer and field hockey programs were in the midst of NCAA-title-winning dynasties under Anson Dorrance and Karen Shelton, respectively. (See below.) More recently, Forbes has seen UNC capture national championships in men’s lacrosse (2016), men’s basketball (2017), women’s tennis (2023) and women’s lacrosse (2022, 2025), in addition to more crowns in women’s soccer (2024) and field hockey (2018, 2019, 2020, 2022, 2023).
“I definitely feel that, in a good way,” Forbes said. “I look at it as I can learn from these coaches that have won national championships.”
When Forbes became a head coach himself for the first time, before the 2021 season, he had detailed conversations with legendary UNC men’s basketball coach Roy Williams, a three-time NCAA champion as the leader of the Tar Heels and a long-time supporter of Carolina baseball.
“I’m a huge Dean Smith fan, too,” Forbes said. “Sustained success, that’s my biggest goal.
“Do we want to win the national championship? Absolutely. We’re gonna try every single year. We’re gonna do everything we can. But I also have a lot of respect for someone like Mike Martin, that made it (to the CWS) almost every year.”
Whereas Smith didn’t win his first NCAA title until his 21st season as Carolina’s head coach, and he took plenty of criticism for that fact along the way, Martin is college baseball’s most famous example of sustained coaching excellence without ever taking home the ultimate trophy.
A Charlotte native who died in 2024, Martin remains college baseball’s all-time wins leader, with 2,029 victories over his 40 seasons (1980-2019) at Florida State. He led the Seminoles to the College World Series 17 times — that’s tied for the most CWS trips by any head coach — but never claimed a national crown.
“I think about that. Mike Martin was a huge mentor of mine,” Forbes said. “He never won it all, but I do know the impact he had, and every former player I talk to, the impact he had on them is so tremendous. That helps keep things in perspective.”
Forbes said he hopes to impact his UNC players in positive, important ways as people and as athletes, just as Martin, Fox and others helped him as a younger man, but he wants to do such things while continuing to chase championships, too.
Among the 2025 Tar Heels, Forbes credits, among others, three 24-year-olds — shortstop Alex Madera, first baseman Hunter Stokely and pitching ace Jake Knapp — with helping a UNC team with lots of new faces maintain the winning culture that helped the Heels make it to Omaha last year.
Knapp, a 6-foot-5, 270-pound starter and sixth-year senior, earned ACC Pitcher of the Year honors (12-0, 2.17 earned-run average) this season, after missing the 2024 campaign with an injury. Sophomore Jason DeCaro (8-3, 3.42 ERA) and senior Aidan Haugh (5-4, 3.74 ERA), who also played key roles last season, form the rest of the formidable starting rotation. Meanwhile, true freshmen Ryan Lynch (4-1, 2.98 ERA) and Walker McDuffie (3-1, 3.08 ERA) have been mostly brilliant out of the bullpen for a staff that boasts the fourth-best team ERA (3.42) nationally.
“We always start with pitching,” Forbes said. “That’s how we build our team each year. That’s how we build our program.”
Incredibly, seven of the Tar Heels’ eight regulars in the field have started all 54 games so far this season: Madera (team-best .332 batting average), Stokely (team-best 55 RBI), right fielder Tyson Bass, third baseman Gavin Gallaher (team-best 55 RBI), center fielder Kane Kepley (team-best 38 stolen bases), catcher Luke Stevenson (team-best 18 home runs; likely 2025 first-round draft pick) and second baseman Jackson Van De Brake (team-best 15 doubles).
“Really, it’s a good ol’ group of hard-nosed, find-a-way players,” Forbes said. “I tell people all the time, we’re not blowing people out, but we’re just staying in games and finding ways. So I’m excited for them. They’ve put themselves in a great position.
“It’s the type of team, though, that — and I’ve told them this from the beginning — can’t just show up. We had a couple of those teams, where if you just show up, you’re gonna win a lot, because you’re just that good. This team has to play every day, play with intent, play 27 outs. They have to move on quickly, if we give up some runs, and be mentally tough. And they’ve bought into it, and they continue to work.
“Who knows? Sometimes you can go farthest with teams that you just didn’t expect. I thought we had a chance to have a pretty good team and pitch it, but … I’m just excited for the guys.”
So, could this be the group that finally takes UNC baseball to its first NCAA title?
“The way I’m natured, that’s what we’re going after, but we’re also going after the improvement and the process,” Forbes said. “You can’t take (a national championship trophy) with you, but you sure would like to find a way to win it.
“I can tell you this: if we do win it, I’m gonna wake up the next morning — in today’s world — and I’m gonna get on the phone recruiting, because it’s just the way it works until you stop coaching. That pursuit never stops, and I don’t want to ever let that guard down.”
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UNC’s 52 All-Time NCAA Championships
(By Sport)
22—Women’s soccer 11—Field hockey 6—Men’s basketball 5—Men’s lacrosse 4—Women’s lacrosse 2—Men’s soccer 1—Women’s basketball 1—Women’s tennis
(By Head Coach)
21—Anson Dorrance, women’s soccer (1982, 1983, 1984, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1996, 1997, 1999, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2008, 2009, 2012) 10—Karen Shelton, field hockey (1989, 1995, 1996, 1997, 2007, 2009, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2022) 4—Jenny Levy*, women’s lacrosse (2013, 2016, 2022, 2025) 3—Willie Scroggs, men’s lacrosse (1981, 1982, 1986) 3—Roy Williams, men’s basketball (2005, 2009, 2017) 2—Dean Smith, men’s basketball (1982, 1993) 1—Elmar Bolowich, men’s soccer (2001) 1—Joe Breschi*, men’s lacrosse (2016) 1—Sylvia Hatchell, women’s basketball (1994) 1—Brian Kalbas*, women’s tennis (2023) 1—Dave Klarmann, men’s lacrosse (1991) 1—Erin Matson*, field hockey (2023) 1—Frank McGuire, men’s basketball (1957) 1—Sean Nahas*, women’s soccer (2024) 1—Carlos Somoano*, men’s soccer (2011)
*—active head coach
David Glenn (DavidGlennShow.com, @DavidGlennShow) is an award-winning author, broadcaster, editor, entrepreneur, publisher, speaker, writer and university lecturer (now at UNC Wilmington) who has covered sports in North Carolina since 1987.
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