Getting into a pitcher’s duel with Brandon Waddell in Omaha has become a really bad idea for opponents the last two seasons. Waddell continued his College World Series mastery Monday night and that propelled Virginia past Florida, 1-0.
The Cavaliers remain unbeaten in the NCAA Tournament and in the winner’s bracket of double-elimination pool play with the victory. They will face the winner of Wednesday’s game between Miami and Florida on Friday at 3 p.m.
“Going into the game, Coach [Karl] Kuhn and I talked on a couple of occasions,” Virginia coach Brian O’Connor said. “We talked in my hotel room. And we had the right guy on the mound tonight. And we knew that. He had a good as outing as you can have last year in the championship series against Vanderbilt. Brandon Waddell has risen to the occasion many, many times for this team and over the last three years. And we were very, very confident that he was going to give us a quality start. You don’t know – you don’t try to get into predicting how it’s going to work out. But I don’t know anybody would have predicted that … this game would be a 1-0 ballgame.”
Waddell settled in after a somewhat shaky first inning when he put two runners on base. He hit a batter and walked the next to put runners on first and second with two outs. He got out of the situation with a groundout to short stop, though. The Gators opened the next inning with an infield hit, but they could not muster another hit until the eighth inning. In fact, Waddell recorded 12 straight outs after that single in the second inning and he didn’t allow a base runner past second base until the eighth.
The junior pitcher finished with a sterling line: seven innings pitched, two hits, three walks, three strikeouts, and one hit-by-pitch. He threw 62 of 105 pitches for strikes. Considering Florida’s potent offense, Waddell’s performance is even more impressive. The Gators, 50-17 on the season, had scored less than eight runs just once in this NCAA Tournament and had averaged 11.3 runs per game in the event before Monday’s meeting with Virginia. For the season, Florida had ripped off 465 runs and had been shut out just twice. The two hits represent Florida’s lowest total of the season.
Waddell, however, effectively mixed pitches and changed speeds to keep the Gators guessing. They never figured him out, hitting just five balls out of the infield all night long. The 1955 Wake Forest club is the only other ACC team to notch a 1-0 win at the CWS.
“He just did a really good job mixing his pitches, I think,” Florida’s Dalton Guthrie said. “He was throwing change-ups and curveballs on weird counts and he wasn’t missing. So we just didn’t make the adjustment. But he kept putting pressure on us and he did a great job all night.”
“Sometimes you’ve just got to credit the pitcher,” Florida coach Kevin O’Sullivan said. “I’m not going to fault our guys. You gotta remember he’s a fifth-round pick. He beat Vanderbilt last year in the second game, forced a game three. He’s good. Probably the best he’s pitched all year. He was on tonight. I don’t want to take anything away from him. I don’t want to blame our hitters that we didn’t have good approaches. It’s just we ran across a really good pitcher that located his pitches tonight and didn’t give us a whole lot. So I’m going to give all the credit to Waddell. He pitched really good tonight.”
UVa fans would expect nothing else from Big Game Brandon.
Monday’s showing was just another strong performance in a string of quality starts in the NCAA Tournament. Waddell is now 5-1 over nine career starts in the NCAA Tournament, including a 2-0 record in Omaha. Waddell lowered his College World Series ERA to 0.78 (23 IP/2 ER). That’s the eighth-best all-time with a minimum of 20 innings pitched. He has three CWS starts with at least seven innings pitched and one earned run or less – only South Carolina’s Michael Roth, who made four such starts from 2010-12, has accomplished the feat in the last 25 years.
Against TCU last season, Waddell tossed seven innings and allowed one earned run with six hits. Against Vanderbilt in a win-or-go-home Game 2 of last season’s championship series, Waddell pitched a complete game and allowed one earned run with five hits. Then came Monday’s gem of seven innings pitched with no earned runs and only two hits.
“We knew going into it they were a really good hitting team,” Waddell said. “Like you said, they showed it all through the season, postseason, they’ve just been scoring a tremendous amount of runs. So you knew going in that you were going to have to compete. There wasn’t going to be any easy at-bats and they would make you make quality pitches and they were going to take advantage of your mistakes. So you know going in you’ve got to limit those mistakes, continue trying to make those quality pitches, get hitters off balance, and that was kind of our game plan going into it.”
“He had command of all four pitches today,” UVa catcher Matt Thaiss said. “He did a great job keeping the ball down, keeping them off balance. Different counts, he was able to throw his off-speed pitches. And he did a great job. That’s about it.”
The Gators nearly came up with a rally in the eighth inning against Waddell. He walked Guthrie as the lead-off batter and then gave up a single to Ryan Larson, who fell into an 0-2 hole trying to bunt before sending the 2-2 pitch into center field. With runners on the corners with no outs, Virginia’s precarious 1-0 lead was in danger as Waddell gave way to closer Josh Sborz.
Sborz was up to the task. He reflexively knocked down a line drive that was scorched toward his head from Harrison Bader and threw out Larson at second base for the first out. Richie Martin hit a soft liner to second base for the second out and Josh Tobias grounded out to second to end the threat. Three ground ball outs in the ninth inning gave Sborz his 15th save.
“It was basically all reaction and from there I got lucky throwing it to second,” Sborz said of the comebacker to the mound. “After that, I just kind of – after I got that first out and that guy didn’t score, I just tried to get the double play. And from there it just kind of played out.”
The strong pitching combination on the mound meant Virginia needed just one run to get the win. That run came in the sixth inning when the Hoos made contact with four straight hitters. Thaiss singled up the middle to start the sequence and Kenny Towns followed with a shot to left field. Pavin Smith logged an infield single when he beat out a throw after a high chopper to the pitcher.
That brought Robbie Coman to the plate with the bases loaded and one out. He lifted a pitch to the right center field gap and that sacrifice fly scored Thaiss for the 1-0 lead. Coman also had two RBI against Ole Miss in last season’s 4-1 win that advanced UVa out of pool play and into the championship series.
“It was a heck of a ballgame,” O’Sullivan said. “Both teams played at a very high level. Both starting pitchers were outstanding. Came down to an at-bat that Robbie Coman did a nice job and got a sac fly. But I’m real proud of the way we played. Waddell was really good tonight. He was moving the ball back and forth. He kept throwing two different speeds on his fastball and looked like he was throwing a bit of a cutter in on our right-handers and he just kept moving the ball back and forth and just didn’t give us a whole lot. Obviously we had a chance there in the eighth with first and third, and Harrison put a really good swing on the ball. And Sborz did a nice job, and kept his composure, got the out at second. It’s one of those things, if the ball gets through it’s a totally different ballgame. Like I said, proud of our guys. We battled. We just came up a little bit short tonight. But congratulations to Virginia. They earned it. We didn’t give them anything.”
