It’s good to still be watching the Tar Heels play meaningful baseball in the month of June. It’s good that a season that started in the stinging cold of February should come down to the wire as the mercury rises en route to a North Carolina summer. The Bosh has never looked better than under the shimmering waves of heat of a Chapel Hill Super Regional, and I genuinely hope that the USC faithful in attendance have enjoyed their trip across the country. For my money, there is genuinely no better place to see a ballgame, and I pride myself on my measured and unbiased takes on this blog.

It’s really good to feel this tense. I’ve been telling myself that all day — I’m lucky to feel slightly nauseous, to be hardly able to focus on the chores I’ve let pile up around the house. It’s a good problem to have, and the jangling nerves in my arms and legs compliment the butterflies in my stomach quite nicely, thank you very much. In a few hours, Carolina will have nine innings to make their case for a trip to Omaha, college baseball’s holy land, and I’m being perfectly normal about it. Have I been listening to ABBA on repeat? Mind your business. It’s a good song.

Part of the exquisite pain of the best sporting event in the world, March Madness, is the randomness of single-elimination games. The way a team can get hot at exactly the right time, making every correct play and correct decision, and turn the bracket on its ear (as has already happened in other regionals and super regionals across the country). It’s yet another source of anxiety for a fan of a top-seeded team; the way things are falling, the matchups in Omaha have the potential to be so good — the Heels just have to win one more.

The Diamond Heels have played their way into that exact single-elimination situation, staving off the impending offseason with an absolute gem from ace Jason DeCaro. Now, we’re looking at a measly 27 outs that are yet guaranteed in this season; vanishingly few for the team that gets behind in today’s game, and far too many for the team in the lead. This has been a tightly-contested Super Regional, great fun to watch for non-affiliated fans of the sport, and a third game seems only proper for these two programs. Still, for my blood pressure and general sanity, it would’ve been nice for the Heels to take game one and seal this thing with yesterday’s win.

Today, the winner takes it all, and the loser has to fall. This is both simple and plain, and I’m certainly not going to complain. Any day with postseason baseball is a great day to be a Tar Heel.