UNC baseball senior Mikey Madej on regional win: 'This isn't the goal'

North Carolina baseball punched their ticket to the Super Regional on Monday with their win or go-home victory against VCU. Though it’s clearly a big accomplishment for UNC, Tar Heels left fielder Mikey Madej emphasized that it was just the beginning.

“We’re not done yet, I mean, this isn’t the goal,” Madej said after the game. “We’re not going to celebrate like Coach Forbes said, we’ll celebrate in Omaha.”

The senior played a considerable role in getting the Tar Heels to the 7-3 win on Monday. Already having one run on the board, Mikey Madej stepped up to the plate for the Tar Heels with runners on the corners. Swinging on the first pitch he saw, the left fielder hit a towering home run to left field to give UNC a four-run inning.

Madej knew it was gone from the moment it left his bat. He glanced at the ball briefly before a casual bat flip and a home run trot down the first base line.

Now, the Tar Heels move on to play a best-of-three-game series at home versus Arkansas. The series begins Saturday, June 11, at Boshamer Stadium in Chapel Hill. The first game is at 11 a.m. ET.

Scott Forbes addresses making UNC history with Regionals win out of losers bracket

After UNC dropped the second game of its Regional to VCU on Saturday, Scott Forbes found himself in a position that no other Tar Heels baseball coach had gotten out of before. To make it to Super Regionals, they now had to reel off three straight wins out of the losers bracket.

To make things even more difficult, Forbes served a suspension for the next two games.

The Tar Heels narrowly escaped Georgia with a 6-5 win on Sunday to set up a rematch with VCU later that same day. Despite having played just hours earlier, North Carolina got off to a hot start with seven first-inning runs and never looked back on its way to a 19-8 victory that forced the win-or-go-home contest.

Despite the odds stacked against his team, Forbes wasn’t shocked at all to see them pull it off.

“It’s a sign of toughness for sure,” Forbes said postgame. “We talk about that. What is true toughness? What is true grit? We start early in the weight room with coach (Greg) Gatz. There’s so many people that don’t get the credit that deserve the credit and Greg Gatz is one of them. I’ve always thought he’s one of the hardest working people here in our athletic department. He’s been with us a long time and our guys get stronger, more physical and stay healthy and that’s a big part of him and our training staff. So it didn’t surprise me with this group. We even talked about we’d love to host. But with this team, the road is gonna be the road and nothing will surprise me with ’em.”

On3’s Chandler Vessels contributed to this report.