North Carolina coach Scott Forbes and Oklahoma’s Skip Johnson took a similarly long path toward becoming Division I head coaches.
Beginning Saturday, Forbes’ Tar Heels will square off with Johnson’s Sooners in the best-of-three Men’s College World Series Championship Series in Omaha, Neb.
Forbes was an assistant coach from 1999-2002, the pitching coach from 2006-16 and hitting coach starting in 2017, helping North Carolina to a pair of MCWS Championship Series in 2006 and 2007, before taking over for longtime coach Mike Fox after the 2020 season.
Johnson was Texas’ pitching coach under legendary head coach Augie Garrido from 2007-16 before serving one season in the same position at Oklahoma, then being promoted to head coach.
Johnson said he sees plenty of similarities in the two programs squaring off for the title.
“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 looking for its first championship.
The Tar Heels are in the championship series for the third time, falling to Oregon State in the 2006 and 2007 finals.
Oklahoma is looking for its third title, having won the MCWS in 1951 and 1994. The Sooners made the championship series in 2022, falling to Ole Miss in two games.
The Tar Heels will go with All-American Jason DeCaro on the mound in the opener.
The junior righty went 6 2/3 innings, allowing two runs on five hits, in North Carolina’s MCWS-opening 6-2 win over Ole Miss.
“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.”
The Sooners have been red hot offensively in the postseason.
After entering the NCAA Tournament with just 65 home runs, Oklahoma has hit 26 in their 10 games in the tournament, including five in Wednesday’s 11-4 win over Georgia that sent the Sooners to the championship series.
The Sooners are expected to counter with freshman lefty Cord Rager.
Rager didn’t work longer than five innings in any of his 12 regular-season appearances, but he has three consecutive starts of six innings or longer in the postseason, including going a season-high seven innings, allowing just three hits with no runs in the Sooners’ MCWS opener over Alabama on June 13.
Rager’s ascension has mirrored his team’s.
The Sooners dropped each of their final four Southeastern Conference series before going one-and-done in the conference tournament, ousted by LSU 6-2 on May 19.
But unseeded Oklahoma stunned No. 2 seed Georgia Tech in regionals, swept Kansas in the super regionals and has won eight consecutive games.
The Sooners (41-22) have started a trio of freshmen 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.”
The fifth-seeded Tar Heels (53-12-1), with one of the top freshman arms in the country in right-hander Caden Glauber, enter Saturday’s game on a five-game winning streak.
“You’ve got to go for it,” Forbes said. “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.”
–Field Level Media
