As complete a game as the Virginia baseball team played on Wednesday, Thursday was anything but. In fact, the Hoos’ 10-game win streak came to an abrupt close with a 10-2 loss to North Carolina that ended UVA’s 2023 ACC Tournament stay.
Tar Heel bats pummeled Cavalier pitching, Carolina pitching shutdown one of the nation’s top five offenses, and UNC’s defense was web gemming while the UVA defense was lacking.
Virginia coach Brian O’Connor had no problem identifying the reason for UNC’s successful outing, Tar Heel starting pitcher Jake Knapp.
“Knapp’s change-up to our left-handed hitters was really good and he was locating all of his pitches,” O’Connor said. “I felt like we were behind in the count all the time and couldn’t get a lot of advantage counts against him.”
“They certainly played great defense behind him,” the Cavalier skipper added.
Knapp improved to 5-3 on the season, going 5.2 innings while allowing one earned run on 5 hits. He logged 2 walks and 5 strikeouts. He threw a career-high 105 pitches.
But the stat line doesn’t really show how dominant Knapp was. What set Knapp apart in this game was consistently landing his change-up and slider for strikes. Coupled with a 91-95 MPH fastball that he can consistently throw 92-93, he kept the Hoo hitters completely off balance.
UNC Head Coach Scott Forbes said he expected Knapp to match up well against Virginia.
“He matched up good with them at home and I also knew he was a much better and more complete pitcher now than he was then,” Forbes said. “I thought we made great plays behind him [defensively] and when you pitch and defend you have a chance to beat anybody.”
O’Connor agreed.
“The first time around the change-up was really good,” O’Connor said. “Towards the middle innings our guys started to make adjustments but when we had opportunities, first and second and no outs we just couldn’t create big innings.”
In a zone most of the afternoon, seemingly everything Knapp threw was live and located well, especially his change-up. The off-speed pitches were somewhat inconsistent in the game in Chapel Hill but not Wednesday said Carolina catcher Tomas Frick.
“Knapp is getting better and better with all three pitches,” Frick said. “He’s got the feel for the change-up and he’s attacking hitters and not getting behind as much.”
The change-up was not something UVA got a good look at on March 11 and Knapp says he took advantage of that.
“I was able to land my slider for strikes,” Knapp said. “The change-up, I haven’t used much all year and that was something I think didn’t show up on the scouting report so that was big. When I do that with my off-speed pitches, my fastball speeds up a little bit and that’s my best pitch and that opened things up for me.”
In the two games against Virginia this season, Knapp has gone 10 innings, surrendered just 8 hits, allowed 2 runs (the only earned run was Ethan Anderson’s home run Thursday), walked 7 and struck out 9. Southpaw Dalton Pence replaced Knapp to pitch the final 3.1 innings and might have been better than Knapp. He allowed 2 hits while sitting three Cavaliers down via the strikeout and averaged just over three pitches per batter to shut down the 12 Hoos he faced.
The UNC game plan was to aggressively attack UVA hitters said Coach Forbes.
“That’s something you have to do against Virginia because they’re not going to strike out,” Forbes said. “You have to be able to pitch inside and if you walk guys they’re going to hurt you because they can steal bases; they’re athletic.”
Where Carolina had its most success was against the top of the Cavalier order. Virginia’s top four hitters went 1-14 on the day with a walk and 3 strikeouts. The aggressive approach worked for Carolina and Forbes highlighted his team’s efforts in limiting the UVA top four to one hit.
“The key is, when you look at those first four guys, they’re tough as anybody in the country and to only give up one hit to those first four, that was a big deal for us to have success,” Forbes said.
The afternoon was not as successful for Virginia starter Connelly Early (10-2), who suffered only his second loss of the season. Even though Early retired 9 of the first 10 batters he faced, O’Connor admitted there were signs of potential trouble.
“He was through three innings and hadn’t given up a hit but [UNC] did hit some balls hard,” O’Connor stated. “I don’t think his fastball location was great. It seemed like when we were trying to throw a fastball away to a right handed hitter he was missing inside. Connelly has certainly pitched better than he did today. He just missed some spots at times and North Carolina made him pay for it.”
The biggest headache for Early was base on balls. Entering the game, the Army transfer had allowed just 15 walks all season – tied for first in the ACC. In his first four innings against the Tar Heels, 4 walks were more than he surrendered in 6 of his season starts combined. UNC scored on 2 of 4 walks.
Early gave way to Jack O’Connor, who was the only Cavalier hurler to have a clean game with his 2 innings of flawless work.
In all, the Hoos used six pitchers including Evan Blanco, Brian Edgington, Jake Berry, and Jay Woolfolk.
Carolina scored its 10 runs on 10 hits and 8 walks (5 scored). In the end, 9 of the Heels’ 10 runs came in innings four, seven and eight. The big innings and free 90’s were killers in Coach O’Connor’s view.
“[The] three innings where [UNC] put crooked numbers on the board, they were opportunistic,” O’Connor said. “There were three or four walks, not including the intentional walks to Mac Horvath, we allowed them to get an extra runner in scoring position and they capitalized on it. They got the big hits when they needed to drive in runs and created separation in the game.”
“[Jack] O’Connor did a great job and we brought Edgington into a situation he hasn’t been in this year,” O’Connor continued. “Part of that is you believe in them but you also have to find out what they are capable of doing going into next weekend.”
“In a game like this you’re pouring everything you can in to win the ball game and so you saw us bring in our number two and three starters for most of the year and do everything we can to keep it close and give us a chance,” he explained further. “That’s what you have to do and then worry about Saturday when you get there. I think Edgington made some nice two-strike pitches but Carolina put the ball in play hard on the ground with two outs and runners in scoring position.”
Asked about the plan going forward for Jack O’Connor, Virginia’s skipper elaborated that the plan for the ACC Tournament was to pitch Jack O’Connor out of the bullpen to win one of the two pool games in a shorter outing and bring him back to start the championship game on Sunday.
“He did a great job at Georgia Tech in the final game there pitching out of the bullpen,” Coach O’Connor said. “When you get to this time of year, relievers have been used a lot, typically we have chosen a starter to put in the bullpen to give us the best chance to win the first two games of an ACC Tournament or a NCAA Regional. Jack is doing a nice job of that but he’s certainly a candidate that will pitch out of the bullpen for us the first two games [of a regional] and if we don’t have to use him, he can start game three or game four. We have a ton of confidence in him.”
The NCAA Regionals begin next weekend and the 16 regional sites will be announced on Sunday night. The full 64-team field for the 2023 NCAA Tournament will be released on Memorial Day, May 29, on ESPN2 at noon.
Coach O’Connor is looking forward to more postseason play.
“We’re headed home but we’re going to have a great opportunity to play next weekend and we’ve earned that right for what we’ve done all season long,” he said.
