By R.L. Bynum
CHAPEL HILL — “Scotty Boy, just keep doing what you’re doing, and it will happen.”
Those were the words to North Carolina coach Scott Forbes from legendary coach Roy Williams after UNC made it to the College World Series Finals, only to come up short in the deciding game against Oklahoma.
Forbes didn’t have to go far on the Carolina campus to find coaches who overcame heartbreak on a big stage and came back to win a national title.
Williams made the Final Four three times at Kansas and the championship game once before breaking through in 2005 at Carolina with the first of three NCAA titles. Carolina women’s lacrosse coach Jenny Levy led teams to six Final Fours and one championship game before winning her first of four titles in 2016.
Forbes said he has leaned on both of them for perspective since falling short in Omaha to end a 54–14–1 season.
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“I want to learn from anybody I can,” Forbes said Monday at a Boshamer Stadium press conference. “I was talking to Jenny about it, and she said, ‘Look, I got there a bunch, and then eventually you just knock the door down.’ So, I’m going with that.”
That search for perspective comes with a healthy dose of self-evaluation, too. Forbes said the process of moving forward starts with looking inward before looking anywhere else.
“Hopefully, we can keep getting back, and maybe eventually … we’re all gonna give it everything we’ve got to win a national championship,” said Forbes, whose program is the only one in the country to make the CWS two of the last three seasons. “That’s a given. We don’t really talk about it here. It should be a given.
“But you ask yourself first. That’s what I do,” Forbes said. “I think it’s very important, is the mirror check and is there anything we could have done different? I do feel like last year, from the top to the bottom, I just feel like we all worked our tails off. We were process-oriented. We just didn’t get it done in that last game.”
By his own account, that mirror check did not turn up much he would change. “I do feel like last year, from the top to the bottom, I just feel like we all worked our tails off. We just didn’t get it done in that last game. I don’t think there’s anything necessarily that I or we would have done different. And we’re going to try to do the same thing this year,” Forbes said.
The conversation with Williams, he said, came in person rather than over the phone.
“I have talked to Coach Williams. I visited with him a ton,” Forbes said. “He was at the football game, and we talked a long time.”
That included the aforementioned wisdom to his friend he calls “Scotty Boy.”
Forbes has also made clear he does not plan to dwell on the disappointment of falling one win short of a national championship. He described his tendency to move on from a season almost immediately once it ends, a habit his players have noticed.
“I’m probably too guilty of turning the page too quick, no matter what. I’ve brainwashed myself. I think some of the players, Owen [Hull] said last year, ‘Coach, I feel like you brainwash us. We’re so process oriented,’ but I try to do the same thing either way,” Forbes said.
He explained the reasoning behind that approach, even hypothetically applying it to the outcome Carolina had hoped for last June.
“If we’d have won it, which we wanted to do, maybe I celebrate a little more because the Bell Tower would have been lit,” Forbes said. “We would have had maybe a parade and a party, but the next morning, if you celebrate too long, you’re just not going to have a good team the next year.”
For Forbes, the goal remains the same no matter how last season ended.
“If anything, my brain just thinks about wanting to do it again and get back and do it again,” Forbes said. “Even if we’d won a national championship, or even if we’d have won three in a row, I feel like you have to have the same mindset. So, turn the page quickly. Went to work, had visits, exit meetings, figuring out how can we have the same experience potentially in the 2027 season,” Forbes said.
That mindset and examples set by Williams and Levy now shape how Forbes has restocked the program with talented transfer portal and freshman classes and fine-tunes the team during fall practice.
The group has already shown the depth and competition he says gives the Tar Heels a chance to return to the sport’s biggest stage.
Photo by Gene Galin
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