University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Baseball

Scott Forbes is entering his sixth season as the head baseball coach at North Carolina in 2026 after taking over the reins of the program prior to the start ...

BaseballSkip AdMartorano, BrandonDatres, KyleForbes, ScottGaines, BryantHowell, JasonJackson, ScottMartorano, BrandonWierzbicki, Jesse

Bryant Gaines enters his first season as associate head coach and seventh as pitching coach for the Tar Heels in 2026. Gaines was promoted to associate head coach in August of 2025 after serving as assistant head coach for the previous five years. He also served as recruiting coordinator from 2021-2024. Carolina has won over 65 percent of its games with Gaines manning the dugout as both a player and a coach and has reached the NCAA tournament eight times in that span. In his tenure on the coaching staff, the team has racked up 212 wins, captured a trio of ACC titles, made five NCAA tournament appearances (each year minus covid), and earned a trip to the 2024 College World Series. A four-year letterman and two-time captain for Carolina from 2007-11, Gaines has now spent a total of 16 seasons with the program after previously serving on Hall of Fame head coach Mike Fox’s staff from 2012-15. He has been a part of half of the team’s trips to the College World Series, four as a player and two as an assistant. The 2025 season brought the crown jewel of Gaines' collection as a pitching coach, as he would guide Jake Knapp to National Pitcher of the Year and ACC Pitcher of the Year honors. Coming off of Tommy John surgery that took the entirety of his 2024 campaign, Gaines coached Knapp to an unbelievable comeback in 2025 that saw the big righty go 14-0 (best record in program history and best in the nation in 2025) with a 2.02 ERA. Knapp would go on to earn unanimous All-America hono

Daniel Wilkerson joined the UNC baseball program as Assistant to the Head Coach and Clubhouse/Equipment manager during the 2022 fall semester. Wilkerson assists the head coach with the daily operations of the baseball program, including all practice and game day activities, while also managing the entire clubhouse and functioning as a liaison with Nike for all apparel and equipment needs. Prior to joining the UNC staff, Wilkerson briefly served as the Director of Operations at Appalachian State, after coaching with the Cotuit Kettlers in the Cape Cod League. Wilkerson served as graduate assistant manager at East Carolina University for two seasons (2021-22), working alongside the director of operations, director of player development and coaching staff to assist with practices, analytics and administrative duties. He spent two summer seasons as the director of operations for Canes American in Fredericksburg, Va., assisting the coaching staff with all operational aspects of scheduling and travel logistics, and managing the team's equipment needs. A native of Oxford, N.C., Wilkerson was a four-year letterman at Randolph-Macon College. He earned a bachelor's degree in biology at RMC in 2020 before completing his master's degree in kinesiology at ECU two years later.

Jason Howell is in his seventh season, fifth consecutive, as a member of the coaching staff at UNC and his second as Director of Pitching Performance, Development and Analytics after joining the Tar Heel coaching staff as a volunteer assistant coach. Howell, who served as a graduate assistant coach with the Tar Heels in 2006 and 2007, returned to Carolina in the fall of 2020 after serving as the Area Scouting Supervisor of the Mid-Atlantic Region (N.C., Va., D.C., Md. and Del.) for the Chicago White Sox organization. He spent his first three seasons in Chapel Hill instructing the outfielders and coaching first base, before assuming his new role during the summer of 2023. Howell is instrumental in leading the program's enhancement and use of pitching-specific technologies, including Trackman and Edgertronic, and in implementing the Newtforce mound, which provides access to cutting-edge ground force data capture abilities. In his first season as Director of Pitching Performance and Development, the Tar Heels reached the College World Series for the 12th time in program history and captured their eighth ACC Coastal Division title. Matthew Matthijs and Dalton Pence earned All-America accolades and Jason DeCaro was named Freshman All-America. Junior Shea Sprague and DeCaro were both named Second Team All-ACC while Matthijs and Pence received third-team all-conference honors. Sprague ranked among the top-6 in the conference in fewest walks per nine innings (2nd), strikeout-to-walk

Jesse Wierzbicki returned to his alma mater as an assistant coach in the fall of 2016 and is going into his 12th overall season, 10th consecutive, as a member of the Carolina coaching staff in 2025. Wierzbicki works with the Tar Heel hitters, catchers and infielders on defense and defensive positioning. He also coordinates the analytics team by applying data to player development and prepares scouting reports on upcoming opponents. He's coached several Tar Heel standouts, including MLB First Round Draft picks Michael Busch, Vance Honeycutt and Aaron Sabato, along with All-America players Kyle Datres, Parks Harber, Mac Horvath, Brian Miller and Logan Warmoth. He has tutored 23 All-ACC position players and 24 Major League Baseball Draft picks. With Wierzbicki on staff, UNC has been to the College World Series twice (2018, 2024) and has won two ACC Coastal Division championships (2017, 2024), three ACC Tournament titles (2019, 2022, 2025), and played in five Super Regionals (2018, 2019, 2022, 2024, 2025). Over the last eight seasons (2017-25), the Tar Heels are 353-165 overall and 149-97 in ACC regular season play. Under his direction, the Tar Heels set school records for home runs (115) and RBIs (502) while posting the program's second-highest slugging percentage (.524) and total runs scored (541) and registering its fifth-highest on-base percentage (.405) in 2024. Since taking over as the primary hitting coach in 2021, Wierzbicki has helped produce two of the top three home ru

BaseballSkip AdDatres, KyleDatres, KyleForbes, ScottGaines, BryantHowell, JasonJackson, ScottMartorano, BrandonWierzbicki, Jesse

Scott Jackson is going into his second season since returning to North Carolina as assistant coach and the recruiting coordinator in July 2024 after spending eight seasons as the head coach at Liberty University from 2016 to 2024. The 2026 campaign will be Jackson's 10th overall season as an assistant coach with the Tar Heels. He was part of the coaching staff from 2009-2015 before leaving to take the head job at Liberty. Jackson posted a career record of 246-181 in eight years at Liberty and guided the Flames to five 30-plus win seasons, including a pair of 40-win campaigns. His 246 career wins and .576 winning percentage ranks third in program history among the program's seven head coaches. Jackson was the first coach in program history to lead the Flames to three NCAA Regional appearances (2019, 2021 and 2022), including a pair of at-large selections in 2021 and 2022. The Flames won a program-record 43 games in 2019 and captured their first ASUN Championship to secure the conference’s NCAA automatic bid to return to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2014. After the season, he was named the ASUN Coach of the Year and the VaSID Coach of the Year Under his tutelage, Liberty had 15 players selected in the MLB Draft and 16 go on to the professional ranks during the last eight years. More than a dozen players received first-team all-conference honors and six were selected All-America. During his first eight seasons in Chapel Hill, Jackson helped North Carolina post a