In front of a program attendance record of 5,919 at a sold out Disharoon Park, the Virginia baseball team put itself in prime position to secure its 8th trip to an NCAA Super Regional with a 2-1 win over East Carolina on Saturday night. The Cavaliers are now 2-0 in this pod heading into Sunday’s games.
That all important fourth game of an NCAA Tournament Regional is an accurate predictor of which baseball team will win the weekend. According to NCAA.com, 81% of teams that start 2-0 in an NCAA baseball regional win the regional. That’s only 1% less than Pete Maravich’s 82% career free throw shooting percentage.
Getting that critical win wasn’t easy.
After three lopsided affairs in the 2023 Charlottesville Regional where the winning team outscored their opponents 39-7, the fans were treated to the first game filled with any degree of drama. UVA and ECU engaged in a pitcher’s duel with some intrigue that came down to the final inning.
For the second time in 363 days, starting pitcher Nick Parker drew the job of shutting down the Pirates in another critical game of an NCAA Regional. This time it came in a Virginia uniform. Last spring Parker held ECU at bay for Coastal Carolina by delivering 8 innings of shutout baseball, allowing just 3 hits, and striking out 7 in game one of the NCAA Regional finals. Saturday night at Davenport Field, Parker again was dominant on the mound going 7 innings while allowing 1 run on 5 hits.
ECU coach Cliff Godwin said Parker was better in the 2022 outing, noting his team looked like it couldn’t see any of his pitches, but that the Hoos executed well in Saturday’s showdown.
“We didn’t know much about him last year,” Godwin said. “I think we hit the ball hard off of him tonight but he’s a really a good pitcher, a Friday night starter in the ACC. Our goal was to hit low line drive, which we did they just happened to be right at people. You can’t pull the ball off Parker or you’re going to spinning yourself into the ground.”
“He knows how to pitch and he just never throws the pitch that you think you’re going to get,” added Godwin.
In two postseason starts against ECU, Parker has allowed 8 hits and 1 run over 15 innings. Virginia coach Brian O’Connor said runs were hard to come by in this duel and that’s a credit to both pitching staffs and that Parker looks to these moments.
“To think that someone will go out this time of year against a great offensive opponent in East Carolina and pitch through the 7th inning, you can’t script that,” O’Connor said. “Nick Parker went out and was in complete command of the game and all of his pitches.”
A lot was made about Parker’s ECU “rematch” but from his perspective, the preparation stays the same regardless of the opposition.
“I do my approach; we do our scouting and we do what we do best,” Parker said. “We go out and we execute and that’s what we do. It doesn’t really matter the opponent, the process of getting there stays the same. We watched the outing from last year. We saw what we did well, what didn’t do well, we watched it objectively, and that was part of our scouting report.”
Pitching to a left-handed loaded lineup, pitch mix and sequence was key for Parker. This was not the 10 strikeout performance from 2022 or the 12 strikeout performance against Georgia Tech in the 2023 ACC Tournament, but Parker got key strikeouts when he needed them. He had 5 strikeouts with 1 walk Saturday.
O’Connor said what made Parker’s outing so impressive was not a big strikeout number but “the mix and match and using all four pitches. That’s as great as you will see.”
Parker gives a lot of the credit to his pitching coach Drew Dickinson and the relationship they have built.
“We’re a good duo together,” Parker said. “We’re talking between every inning about what we want to do, how we want to approach guys. I have all the trust in him.”
Due to the heavy number of lefties in the lineup, if Virginia had a lead late in the game, O’Connor’s plan was to bring in Jake Berry to close it out. Than plan worked. Berry was phenomenal. The southpaw sat down all 6 ECU hitters he faced, striking out 2 on 23 pitches in a very efficient 2 innings of work.
ECU had some strong pitching of its own. Pirate hurlers stifled the nation’s leading offense, holding the Hoos to just 2 runs and Virginia uncharacteristically failed to produce with runners in scoring position by going 2-13.
While UVA’s pitching continued to dominate as it had against Army in the NCAA Tournament opener, the Cavalier offense had trouble capitalizing on run-scoring opportunities. To the team’s credit however, O’Connor said the Hoos remained poised and didn’t try to do too much.
“In the first part of the game, I think it was the third inning we had 6 hits and only 1 run. That can get frustrating because we had opportunities to open it up a little,” O’Connor said. “But when you’re facing high level pitching, that speaks to their execution of pitches. We had opportunities and just couldn’t get them and that’s where I talk about the poise that our team showed. They continued to fight knowing at some point the game is going to come around to you.”
To have success in the postseason, O’Connor feels it’s not just about execution and talent, but about poise. Not getting caught in the moment or allowing the moment to get caught up in you.
“You’ve got to show great poise and the game will come back around to you,” O’Connor said. O’Connor looked no further than Ethan Anderson. “On the knock he had to right field to drive in the winning run – that’s what tonight was about.”
Indeed, Anderson came up big for the second straight game. With the score tied in the bottom of the seventh inning with two outs and Ethan O’Donnell on third, Anderson didn’t press. He knew his job was to put the ball in play and get O’Donnell home. Anderson kept his poise, went through his process and ended up with a successful at-bat. That hit to right field turned out to be his only hit of the night, but it brought a roar from the crowd just like his first inning home run against Army the day before.
Anderson finished 1-3 with that critical RBI, which mirrored the same line from Kyle Teel who had the other scoring hit that brought in a third inning run from Jake Gelof. Casey Saucke went 3-4, while Anthony Stephan was 2-4.
“My first couple of at-bats wasn’t what I wanted to do in the situation. I know with a runner on third and two outs I had to get a base hit, score the go-ahead run,” Anderson said. “That was my biggest focus to put a ball in play. Maybe I didn’t barrel the ball exactly how I wanted to, but I stayed inside of it and it found grass.”
Anderson, as coach O’Connor preaches, knew to win at this time of the year against great opponents like East Carolina, you have to show great poise.
“I know he wanted to have better at-bats earlier, but when we needed him the most, that’s what I call a winner,” O’Connor said. “Somebody that doesn’t succeed a few times, but at the most important time you rise up and get the job done for your team.”
