There are times when the stars align and the perfect player finds himself in the perfect scenario. That happened on Friday night at the Chapel Hill Super Regional when the Tar Heels’ all-time home run king came to the plate in the bottom of the ninth with the game tied. Vance Honeycutt’s walk-off two-run homer seemed inevitable.
“It’s something called Bosh magic, and it’s real this year,” Honeycutt said.
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The home run gave the Tar Heels an 8-6 win over the West Virginia Mountaineers at Boshamer Stadium, adding yet another walk-off win to their postseason résumé. They started off their Regional play with a walk-off grand slam against LIU and closed it out with a nail-biting 10-inning victory over LSU.
“This team is special,” Honeycutt said. “We watched Lone Survivor the other night, and it said ‘We’re never out of the fight.’ We took that and ran with it.”
While this was Honeycutt’s first time providing the late-inning NCAA tournament heroics, he has certainly set the tone for UNC in 2024. The No. 20 Draft prospect became the program’s career home run leader earlier this season (which sits at 62 and counting). He also became the first ACC player with 50 home runs and 70 stolen bases in the span of a career.
His walk-off homer was his 25th of the season, which moves him into a tie for the ACC lead alongside Drew Burress (Georgia Tech) and James Tibbs III (Florida State).
Honeycutt and his fellow Heels need just one more display of "Bosh magic" to advance to the College World Series in Omaha for the first time since 2018.