20 Years Later: The 2006 College World Series Run that Elevated UNC's Baseball Program

Twenty years later, the sound still carries. Not just the crack of Chad Flack’s bat in Tuscaloosa – though anyone who lived through it can still hear that, too – but the way the moment seemed to hang in the air. On June 10, 2006, North Carolina trailed Alabama in the bottom of the ninth of the Tuscaloosa Super Regional. The Crimson Tide were 35-0 that season when leading after seven innings, and despite UNC’s four-run eighth, the home team had scored three runs in the top of the inning to regain a 7-6 lead.  

A loss would not have been season-ending. UNC had won Game 1 handily and therefore had a life to spare, although a rubber match on enemy turf with a hostile crowd was not an ideal setting for a program that had not been to the College World Series in 17 years. It was then, in the dugout in between frames, that Flack turned to then-assistant coach Scott Forbes and told him what has since become etched into Carolina baseball lore: “We’re not going to lose this game.”

Forbes, who is in his sixth season at the helm, replied in his textbook style, telling Flack, “Go do it.”

Flack laughed about the missing curse words in his line during Inside Carolina’s “20 Years Later” podcast, but the belief was real. He knew someone would step up to the proverbial plate, but didn’t know that he would be the one to send the Tar Heels to Omaha. When the ball cleared the right-field fence at Sewell-Thomas Stadium, he became lost in the moment. “It was a blackout until I was about to turn blue on the bottom of that pile.”

The rest of the team remembers the image of assistant coach Chad Holbrook on the third‑base line, hands on his head, trying to process what had just happened, and possibly how everything was about to change.

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UNC had reached the NCAA postseason in six of Mike Fox’s first seven years in Chapel Hill, winning at least 41 games in those six seasons. Only once had Carolina reached the doorstep of the College World Series, falling in two games to South Carolina in the Columbia Super Regionals in 2003.

The Tar Heels seemed primed to take the next step as a program in 2005. With a pair of preseason All-American pitchers in Andrew Miller and Daniel Bard, a recruiting class hailed as one of the best in the country, and a preseason No. 7 ranking, expectations were as high as they had been in recent decades for UNC. As it turned out, the team was too young – 24 of the 34 players on the roster were freshmen or sophomores – and a challenging locker room culture didn’t breed success. Carolina was sent to Gainesville for its regional and lost two of its three games.

Despite the team’s youth, there were leaders within those underclassmen ranks. What had transpired in 2005 – that short-circuiting of potential – had shaped those Tar Heels entering the 2006 season. The roster was older, deeper, and more connected than any group Fox had coached to that point. The ego that had been a heavy presence in the clubhouse had dissipated. The players talk about that preseason with a kind of clarity that only comes when you realize later what was being built. They had a future big leaguer like Adam Warren throwing weekday games. They had hitters who had taken their lumps as freshmen and were now ready to become the backbone of the lineup. And they had a group that genuinely enjoyed being around each other, not just in the locker room, but everywhere.

“We had some leaders that weren’t going to allow that selfishness again,” Fox told Inside Carolina this week.  

Neither Bard nor Miller took themselves too seriously as Major League prospects and were therefore more interested in winning than in improving their draft stock. There were veteran presences like pitchers Matt Danford and Jonathan Hovis and outfielder Jay Cox, although it was the sophomore class that defined UNC’s run to the final game of the 2006 college baseball season. Flack. Josh Horton. Seth Williams. Benji Johnson. Andrew Carignan. Luke Putkonen.

UNC won 25 of its final 31 regular-season games to win the ACC Coastal Division title and earn the No. 2 seed in the ACC Tournament, only to drop both of its games in Jacksonville, Fla., to open postseason play. The Tar Heels would not lose again for exactly one month until they reached the national championship series in Omaha.

The players from that 2006 team remember what UNC baseball had been when they arrived. It was a respected program, competitive and consistently good, but not yet the kind that made opponents nervous in June.

“It was a good program, but it was stuck in that bottom half of the top 25, go to a regional and lose,” Miller said.

Even the bright spots — the 2003 Super Regional, the talent on the 2005 roster — didn’t fully change the internal math. The players could feel they were close, but not close enough.

“It seemed like still a long way from Omaha,” Danford said in reflecting on the Super Regional run in 2003.

The 2006 team was a mix of stars, grinders, oddballs, and quiet assassins. The players joked about being an island of misfit toys, with a third of the roster from Charlotte and the rest scattered across every baseball pocket in the country. They told stories of Carrigan pitching in the snow in a T‑shirt, of Josh Horton keeping things loose because Coach Fox took everything seriously, and of a bullpen full of personalities that didn’t seem like they should fit together but somehow did.

“There was zero ego in that dugout,” Flack said. “I don’t remember coming across anybody who was asking about themselves or asking about their stats, why this was happening. Now in ’05, that was part of the issue when we had some younger players playing over some older folks.”

That formed the foundation that led UNC back to Omaha for the first time in 17 years. For several players, the first memory of Omaha wasn’t the stadium, but rather the scale. It seemed as though there were more people waiting on them at the hotel when they arrived than there had been in the stands at the old Bosh. Rosenblatt Stadium felt like a cathedral, and there were countless fans who were not in town for any specific team, but instead for the College World Series. It was an event.

“I played in Oakland, so that’s probably not the best big league perspective, but it felt more big league there than a lot of my big league career,” Carignan said. “People just cared, and it mattered to them.”

The Tar Heels carried forward their NCAA postseason momentum into Omaha, upsetting Cal State Fullerton in 13 innings in their first game and shutting out No. 1 national seed Clemson, 2-0, in the winners’ bracket game. Another victory over Fullerton sent them to the national championship series, where Oregon State awaited.

UNC delivered more late-inning magic in Game 1. Flack laced a triple down the right-field line to open the bottom of the eighth before scoring on a head-first slide into home plate after a passed ball to give Carolina the 4-3 victory. The Tar Heels jumped out to a 5-0 lead in the top of the fourth inning of Game 2, a margin large enough to prompt fans to daydream about the program’s first national championship, and then OSU exploded with seven runs on four hits, two walks, and a HBP in the bottom half of the inning. The 11-7 loss meant a rubber match on the final day of the college baseball season.

The bottom of the eighth inning of Game 3 proved to be a difficult ending to a special season. With two outs and nobody on, OSU first baseman Bill Rowe walked on five pitches. Centerfielder Tyler Graham followed with a bloop single to shallow left field. Then tragedy struck. A routine groundball to second base could have ended the inning, but Bryan Steed’s throw to first was wide left, allowing Rowe to score from second base on the error.

UNC didn’t lay down in the ninth inning, putting the tying run in scoring position with one out. A fielder’s choice gave the Tar Heels runners on the corners with two outs, and as the potential storybook ending required, Flack stepped into the batter’s box once again. This time, however, he got under the 1-0 pitch and flied out to centerfield. A defining season that came achingly close to perfection. That’s baseball.

“I will always be devastated they are not national champions, but to see them now and see them so close, so successful, so happy, I will take that every time,” Fox said. “Certainly, great memories and relationships for them. For all of us.”

The legacy of the 2006 CWS run is evident in hindsight. That Carolina team 20 years ago didn’t just provide an unexpected thrill ride in June, but did so while cementing a foundation that would endure for decades. It set the table for everything that followed. A new baseball stadium on familiar ground, a national brand, a steady stream of big leaguers, and the expectation that June baseball was part of Carolina’s identity. Omaha has since become the standard, with seven trips in between then and now.

The Tar Heels are once again in position to contend for a CWS berth as the road to Omaha once again goes through Chapel Hill.