North Carolina fought its way to the championship series of baseball’s College World Series two straight years, only to come home without the trophy.

Now, the Tar Heels, seeded second overall in the NCAAS tournament, have returned for a third try.

The players say they are in Omaha, Neb., traditional home of the event, for one express purpose: to win the national championship.

“Our season would have been a disappointment if we weren’t going back to Omaha,” sophomore right-handed pitcher Alex White said. “I still feel like it will be a disappointment if we don’t win the national championship. That is our ultimate goal, and we’re going to give it our best shot out there.”

White will pitch the opening game for Carolina, which begins at 7 p.m. tonight against LSU. The game is scheduled to be broadcast on ESPN2.

Center fielder Seth Williams said he expects the Tar Heels to be calm and ready to go, with this being their third straight trip to Omaha.

“The first year I was a little overwhelmed,” Williams said. “Now it’s like we’re supposed to be there. We feel a lot more relaxed, and that helps you out totally.”

Seniors feel it the most.

“The national championship is all we want, especially the upperclassmen,” Williams said. “I don’t feel any pressure at all. The national championship is all I’m thinking about.”

Carolina baseball certainly has seen its share of drama the last few years.

Chad Flack hit home runs two years ago in the eighth and ninth innings of a super regional’s deciding game, which sent UNC on its first of these three trips. A year ago, he hit the home run that put UNC ahead against South Carolina in the deciding game of that super regional.

Flack, a senior third baseman, says the upperclassmen have learned from their experiences.

“We expect to get there,” Flack said. “It’s so hard every time to go through the regional and super regional, and to play so well in the regular season that you get to host, but we telling ourselves we have unfinished business to take care of.

“Getting to Omaha was a goal, but it is beyond that now. We need to go out there and play up to our capability and win it all this year.”

The eight teams in Omaha are split into two divisions, with each division playing a double-elimination tournament. The winners of the two groups will meet in a best-of-three series for the national championship.

The first year Carolina was there, the Tar Heels defeated Oregon State in the opening game of the championship series and then had the Beavers down 5-0 to start game two, yet came back to Chapel Hill without the trophy.

Last season, Carolina met the Beavers again, and that time Oregon State swept UNC in two games.

Fifth-year senior reliever Rob Wooten said the team understands what went wrong in those two final series, and they will not repeat the mistakes if they can just get through the rigorous double-elimination of the initial bracket portion of the series.

“The first year, I think we started counting outs when we were up 5-0 in that second game of the national championship,” Wooten said. “Last year, it seemed like we played until we got to the national championship, and then we wanted to beat Oregon State so bad that we lost our focus, a little bit, on playing the game on each out. So this year, we’re going to take it from out-to-out, pitch-to-pitch, swing-to-swing.”

The memories, Wooten said, never go away.

“I think about it every single day,” Wooten said. “Good memories and bad memories. They are always in my head every single day. We talk about them every single day. This trip, I hope we can have the greatest memory of all.”

The one person who is applying the brakes to all this talk of being serious and “taking care of business” is none other than Coach Mike Fox.

Yes, he wants to win, but he says the best way to achieve this goal is for everyone on the team to avoid being so concerned about winning that they actually get the opposite result.

“I don’t want them to be too business-like,” Fox said. “I want to be careful about that. I want them to smile and enjoy it out there. If there is any pressure, I’m going to do everything I can to personally not feel it, and for our players not to feel it.

“I don’t think that is fair. We all want to win. It’s a given we want to win a national championship in baseball for the University of North Carolina. But I’m not going to let myself think about the last couple of years. I don’t want to ruin this year. I’m realistic enough to know I could coach here another 20 years and take another 10 teams there and still not win it.”

Eddy Landreth can be reached at chnsports@nando.com.