The Virginia baseball team began its season in the state of North Carolina back in February with a trio of wins in Boiling Springs. Now the Hoos hope they can start the NCAA Tournament with three wins on the opposite end of the state too.
The Cavaliers received a No. 2 seed in the Greenville Regional hosted by top seed East Carolina. They’ll open play Friday night at 6 p.m. against No. 3 seed Coastal Carolina, while host ECU faces No. 4 seed Coppin State earlier in the day at 1 p.m. The first team to avoid two losses advances out of the double elimination pod and into a best two out of three Super Regional against the winner of the Austin (Texas) Regional. Check out the bracket here.
UVA has made the NCAA Tournament in back-to-back years and for the 16th time overall under coach Brian O’Connor.
“It’s an honor to be in the NCAA Tournament,” O’Connor said. “You never want to take that for granted for sure because it’s an earned opportunity and all 64 teams that are playing this coming weekend earned that right and we did as well because of what we’ve done over the course of the entire regular season. A lot of times lots is to be made of what you’ve done lately and certainly we were not playing great Virginia baseball last week at the ACC Tournament. That said, there’s been many years that we didn’t play well in that tournament and went on and made runs to Omaha. We’ve talked a lot on our team the last three or four days, we need to be better and get better and that we’ve earned the right to be able to play this weekend. We’re excited about the opportunity in front of us.”
The Cavaliers enter the NCAA Tournament with a 38-17 record, but on a three-game losing streak after two losses in the ACC Tournament last week. Florida State, a No. 3 seed in the Auburn Regional, handed UVA a 13-3 loss, while Notre Dame, a No. 2 seed in the Statesboro (Georgia Southern) Regional, secured a 3-0 win against the Hoos. That came on the heels of a 11-3 setback at Louisville, the top seed in the Louisville Regional, to close the regular season.
The two tourney defeats were out of character from the rest of the season. The FSU margin was just the second double-digit loss of the year, while the Irish became the first team to shut out Virginia all season. While the final result broke away from themes, the Hoos did fall behind early in both games and that’s something that has become a problem later in the season.
O’Connor didn’t let his team hide from the bumps in the road, though. UVA held an extended and intense practice Sunday to try to work through some of the issues.
The focus, as it always is with Virginia teams in this era, was on cleaning up execution issues defensively and re-establishing a determined, prepared, and aggressive approach offensively. The Hoos committed 3 errors, walked 8 batters, had 21 strikeouts, and left 15 runners on base in the two ACC Tournament games.
“I can tell you it hasn’t been easy on the players. Our practice on Sunday was the most challenging practice, toughest practice, longest practice, most intense practice that they have had since the preseason,” O’Connor said. “That’s what we needed to do. We needed to pay back the baseball gods and do things the right way and get focused with hard work. We did that. We’ll continue with that approach. When you practice that way and you approach that way, you feel like you are ready to have success so that’s always been the staple of our program and we’ll continue to do that.”
UVA will have to reap the fruits of that labor on the road against tough competition.
East Carolina enters the tournament with a 42-18 record as winners of the American Athletic Conference Tournament. The Pirates own the nation’s longest winning streak at 18 games with their last loss coming on April 26 at NC State. Coastal Carolina, Virginia’s opening opponent, comes to Greenville with a 36-18-1 record. The Chanticleers went 15-10 in non-conference games this season while playing the second toughest non-con schedule in the country. Coppin State has a 24-28 record, but won the MEAC Tournament.
The Hoos have some experience to draw on at this time of year, though. Last season, they entered the tourney as a three seed playing an NCAA Regional in Columbia, South Carolina. They managed to bounce back from an opening loss to advance past Old Dominion with a 4-3 victory in the 10th inning. After that, they won the last two games of a three-game series with Dallas Baptist to earn a spot at the College World Series in Omaha.
Players like Devin Ortiz, Alex Tappen, Chris Newell, Kyle Teel, Nate Savino, and more all played significant roles in that run. They’ll need to help set the tone for freshmen like Griff O’Ferrall, Casey Saucke, Ethan Anderson, Jay Woolfolk, and others that will be in the postseason pressure cooker for the first time.
Any of the Hoos can look at Virginia history to see that being on the road isn’t an automatic eliminator, though. The key will be to reset and recalibrate after the ACC Tournament results.
“I’m not going to sit here and predict what’s going to happen. I will predict that our guys will be ready and we’ll play with everything we’ve got,” O’Connor said. “Hopefully, we execute and have a little bit of good fortune and maybe weeks down the road, we can look back and say hey going 0-2 in the ACC Tournament was the best thing to happen for us because it got us refocused and got us back on track. Only time will tell on that.”
Love his approach.