OMAHA, Neb. -- The championship combatants for the 79th edition of the Men's College World Series were determined on a windy, sunny, shockingly non-hot Wednesday.
The North Carolina Tar Heels and the Oklahoma Sooners have little in common when it comes to Omaha history. They own a combined 25 MCWS appearances, but somehow, they have never faced off in the series and haven't ever been in Nebraska playing baseball at the same time.
Yet, they looked an awful lot like each other on Wednesday. Both jumped out to leads. Both tried their best to blow those leads. But ultimately, both vanquished their one-loss opponents.
The Heels defeated Omaha-darling West Virginia 12-7; they had a 12-1 lead before surrendering six runs over the final two frames. And the Sooners outlasted fellow SEC opponent Georgia 11-4, defeating the nation's top homer-slugging squad by blasting five four-baggers of their own.
In the end, the numbers won. Those numbers being the rawhide, red-seamed catbird seat that is a 2-0 MCWS start.
For the non-Omaha initiated, the Men's College World Series is an eight-team, two-branched, double-elimination bracket. The goal of every team is to distance themselves from that elimination by reaching two wins while everyone else on their assigned side of the tourney suffers one loss or more. Being 2-0 provides the safety net of having a loss to give stuffed away in their back pocket that the others do not. But in a perfect world -- perfect as in turning a 2-0 start into a 3-0 start -- that back pocket stays buttoned up.
For the past three years, both sides of that bracket have produced an undefeated team. So, for the third straight year, there will be no games played on Thursday. And that's just fine by these two latest 3-0 squads.
"That's the goal. I told the coaches today, 'Listen, I'm going for it,'" said Scott Forbes, in his sixth year as UNC coach and his 16th altogether on the coaching staff, when asked about balancing winning in the here and now versus saving weapons for a possible elimination game rematch.
And that should be the goal. Because 29 of the past 35 MCWS champions started 2-0. When this year's tournament ends with a dogpiled champ either Sunday or Monday, that mark will officially become 30 of the past 36.
It isn't impossible. There were those six, after all. The last to do it wasn't long ago, when LSU lost its second game to Wake Forest then had to hold off Tennessee before having to defeat the Demon Deacons twice to make the finals in 2023. But to get there, the Tigers had to survive perhaps the greatest non-title game in Omaha history, and they only accomplished that because they had Paul Skenes on the mound.
So, yeah, avoiding the need for miracles ...
"You want those two days [off] if you can get them," Forbes continued. "It doesn't guarantee that you're going to win, but you have a pitching staff like ours, you can recover. You can get tomorrow -- the day that you'd be playing an elimination game against the same guys who just beat you -- to rest. And also get a lift in."
As Oklahoma coach Skip Johnson added, "To me, it's about what do you do with that time?"
Johnson coached Oklahoma to a 3-0 start in 2022 before losing to Ole Miss in the finals. He was an assistant coach for a Texas team that started 3-0 before falling to LSU in the championship series in 2009.
"In older formats, when the Omaha schedule spread out over nearly two weeks, you might have too much time on your hands," Johnson said. "Guys get bored. They get out of their routine.
"An extra day, or in this case two extra days, that's easy to stay in your routine and hopefully in your groove. Focus is not a problem with this team."
UNC played Friday and beat Ole Miss 6-2. It played Sunday and defeated West Virginia 5-2. Then it had two full days of rest before Wednesday's game while the Mountaineers had to play an elimination game on Tuesday. Oklahoma won Saturday over Alabama and Monday over Georgia, and it also enjoyed an off day before playing Georgia again on Wednesday.
Though West Virginia and Georgia both fought back in Wednesday's contests, they also very much looked like teams that had been grinding while their 2-0 opponents looked very much like teams that had not.
Forbes thought back to all of his Omaha experience with UNC baseball, nine trips in all that have covered nearly every conceivable MCWS start. In 2006, when the Heels made it to the finals against Oregon State, they went 3-0 before losing to the Beavers in excruciating fashion. One year later, they were back in the title bout with Oregon State again.
"My wife, we were talking about being in Omaha, and she remembers the first year very much because we had some off days," Forbes recalled Wednesday afternoon. "But then she also remembers '07, because we lost, and it just felt like we were playing every single day for a national championship."
So, coach, you're saying 3-0 is better?
"Look at the smile on my face," he replied, laughing. "Yes, it is."
His counterpart from Oklahoma also smiled as he agreed. Then Johnson quickly added, "Now the goal is to get to 4-0."