CHAPEL HILL — If UNC baseball is going to clinch another trip to the College World Series and compete for a national championship, the Tar Heels need Luke Stevenson at his best.
As of June 5, Stevenson is No. 20 on MLB.com’s top 200 list of draft prospects. Arguably college baseball’s top catcher, the 6-foot-1, 210-pound sophomore has a cannon behind the plate and power with a bat in his hands.
Named the 2025 ACC Tournament MVP after going 3-for-9 (.333), with two home runs and five RBIs in the first two tournament games, Stevenson is enduring a bit of a slump across the last five postseason games.
During that stretch, Stevenson is 1-for-19 (.052), with four strikeouts, four walks and an RBI entering the Chapel Hill Super Regional, which pits No. 5 overall seed UNC (45-13) against Arizona (42-18) for a trip to Omaha. UNC’s offense was humming to the tune of 8.5 runs per game in the Chapel Hill Regional, but Stevenson’s lone hit was an infield dribbler off an Oklahoma pitcher in the regional finale.
“Luke will tell ya, ‘I just want to help our team win.’ So I just explained to him, ‘You have helped our team win. Let’s go into this super regional being you,’ ” UNC coach Scott Forbes said June 5 during a press conference at Boshamer Stadium.
Stevenson has proven more than capable of coming through with clutch hits for the Tar Heels. He played a key role in helping the Heels win Game 1 of the Chapel Hill Super Regional in 2024 against West Virginia. With UNC trailing 6-5 in the bottom of the ninth inning, Stevenson lifted a leadoff home run to center field before Vance Honeycutt’s two-out, walk-off blast.
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Entering a second straight super regional appearance, Forbes and hitting coach Jesse Wierzbicki have had conversations with Stevenson about getting back to being himself in the batter’s box ahead of Game 1 on Friday, June 6 (Noon, ESPN2). They pointed to MLB veteran Kyle Schwarber as an example for Stevenson to follow.
Schwarber has a .231 batting average across 11 seasons, with 20 or more home runs in eight of those. He’s on track to make it nine, including five in a row if he can hit one more homer this season with the Philadelphia Phillies. He’s also had 100 or more walks in back-to-back seasons to help offset his strikeout numbers.
A Wake Forest native, Stevenson has a .254 batting average, with 18 home runs, nine doubles and 53 RBIs. He also has 58 walks and 68 strikeouts in his second season.
“Coach Wierz and I used Kyle Schwarber as an example. He is one of the best players – he’s an All-Star. He doesn’t hit .350, but when he hits the ball, he does damage and he walks a ton. And that’s Luke Stevenson. What he’s gotten away from are those walks, because he hadn’t gotten a lot of hits,” Forbes said.
“Any hitter’s guilty of it. You start thinking, ‘I gotta get a hit, I gotta get a hit.’ Well, Luke, I explained to him – and Coach Wierz did a better job of explaining to him – if you walk, that’s your single, ‘cause you’re just not gonna hit many singles. So, just get back to controlling the strike zone. If you walk and you go 0-for-0 for the day, but you’re on base four times and you score four times, you helped us win. Really just trying to control the strike zone and when you swing, swing at your pitch and you can do damage.”
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But Stevenson’s struggles at stringing together hits haven’t negatively affected his defensive prowess or leadership. A left-handed batter who throws righty, Stevenson made several big-time plays behind the plate in the regional and continued to pick the right moments to visit the mound as a calming, reassuring voice for Tar Heel pitchers.
“I told the team, the most impressive thing about Luke Stevenson is he doesn’t carry his at-bats behind the plate. I was a catcher and I had a really hard time with that, and I wasn’t good at it,” Forbes said.
“. … He’s locked in defensively and that can be hard when you feel like, ‘Hey, I’m not doing my part offensively.’ It’s easy to be pressing and carry it back there, and a lot of catchers do. He’s the leader of our pitching staff, he is the definition of a workhorse. He’s another guy, in all reality, I know he’s a high draft prospect. So, I’m just enjoying being around him and watching him be so professional behind the plate.”
Whether he’s behind the plate or in the batter’s box, Stevenson will again be in the spotlight during the super regional. If he’s at his best, UNC will likely end the weekend with a dogpile celebration.
Rodd Baxley covers Duke, North Carolina and N.C. State for The Fayetteville Observer as part of the USA TODAY Network. Follow his ACC coverage on X/Twitter or Bluesky: @RoddBaxley. Got questions regarding those teams? Send them to rbaxley@fayobserver.com.