After three pressure-packed weeks of NCAA Tournament action and a 50-plus game regular-season schedule, the college baseball season is down to one final game between the Oklahoma Sooners and the North Carolina Tar Heels on Monday night to decide the 2026 national champion.
The winner-take-all contest between the upstart Sooners (42-23) and season-long national title-contending Tar Heels (54-13-1) features two schools better known for national prominence in football and basketball, respectively.
The two teams split the first two games in the best-of-three Men's College World Series championship series, with Oklahoma taking Game 1 9-3 on Saturday and North Carolina bouncing back for a 6-2 victory on Sunday to force a deciding third game.
Read more: If any team can survive this CWS do-or-die moment it’s these Oklahoma Sooners
History will have a say either way Monday's Game 3 goes
History will have a role whichever way Monday's Game 3 goes. This is North Carolina's 13th appearance in the Men's College World Series, the eighth-most of any NCAA Division I program. It is the Tar Heel's second appearance in the last three years. North Carolina, however, has never won an NCAA championship in baseball. The closest they have come is two runners-up finishes in 2006 and 2007 (both times losing to Oregon State).
So while destiny might be sitting in the North Carolina dugout on Monday night, the Sooners have some CWS history on their side. There have been 12 MCWS championship series that have gone to three games. Only three teams that lost the opening game of the championship series went on to take the next two games and win the national championship.
There's plenty of motivation on both sides to come out on Monday and finish off this thing. Oklahoma was never really expected to be in Omaha for the Men's College World Series. After losing seven of its final 10 games, OU managed to limp its way into the NCAA Tournament. Once in the tournament field, though, the Sooners, who finished the regular season 11th in the all-mighty SEC standings, orchestrated a complete turnaround that resulted in nine consecutive wins, including four straight in the MCWS, to put them on the brink of a national championship.
North Carolina, on the other hand, has been Steady Eddy all season long, blessed with a team that featured one of the country's best offensive lineups and with a pitching staff to match. The Tar Heels were no real surprise to make it to the College World Series this season.
Oklahoma head coach Skip Johnson believes his team will be ready to go in Monday night's deciding Game 3 and will put Sunday's disappointing loss behind them.
"I think these guys will be ready to play," he said in Sunday's postgame press conference. "I mean, we've faced adversity all season long and dealt with it."
The Sooners faced elimination in the Atlanta Regional and responded with three straight wins, including back-to-back wins over regional host and No. 2 national seed Georgia Tech, to stay alive and advance in the tournament. Johnson's team doesn't seem to be bothered by the pressure that a deep run in the tournament can place on a team.
"That mindset," wrote Stormin in Norman editor Dakota Gregory, "which OU softball coach Patty Gasso describes as 'freedom,' was easy to keep when the Sooners had nothing to lose, but now they have everything to gain."
Frankly, on paper, Monday's championship final looks like a mismatch. But then you consider Oklahoma's recent power and offensive surge (the Sooners have outscored their 11 postseason opponents 105-51) that has resulted in wins over No. 2 national seed Georgia Tech and No. 3 Georgia, both twice, No. 7 Alabama and No. 15 Kansas during this championship run, plus a win already over the Tar Heels, it's easy to conclude that Monday's deciding game should not be a walk in the park for either team.
As always will be the case, the best team doesn't alway win; it's the team that performs the best that day. That truism will be the deciding factor in which team gets to celebrate a national championship on Monday night in Omaha.
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