Kiss of death?

The University of North Carolina has been playing baseball for more than a century. And in all that time the Tar Heels have never been ranked No. 1 in the country.

Well, to be fair, they probably didn’t have polls in the 1920s. But you get the picture.

So, to finally reach that point – a No. 1 ranking – was special for Carolina this year. The Collegiate Baseball newspaper had the Tar Heels in the top spot last week.

As much as his coaching instincts told him to ignore it, Mike Fox simply couldn’t do that. Sure, there’s a lot of season left to play, and being No. 1 in April means nothing come NCAA tournament time, but there’s something special about being at the top of the heap as well, no matter what time of the season it happens.

“We’re happy to be up there, certainly,” Mike Fox, Carolina’s head coach, told ACC Nation. “To say that we don’t pay attention to it, everybody knows that’s not true.”

And even though Fox admitted that being the top-ranked team can be, in his words, “the kiss of death,” he also understands that the players making up this year’s squad deserve to be honored for doing something no other Carolina baseball team has ever done.

“We had to stop and recognize it just for a moment, then go back to practice,” Fox said.

The lofty ranking may be fleeting after a mid-week loss to North Carolina Greensboro last Tuesday, but at least the players know they are considered among the best in the nation. Now they just need to continue to play like they deserve that consideration.

- Patrick Hite