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June 5, 2015

2015 NCAA Division I Baseball Super Regional • Game 1
June 5, 2015 • 4 p.m.
Maryland (42-23) vs. Virginia (37-22)

VIRGINIA POST-GAME NOTES
• Virginia is now 46-32 all-time in the NCAA Tournament and 8-7 in the super regional round.
• UVa is now 25-17 all-time at Davenport Field in the NCAA Tournament.
• UVa is now 6-6 at Davenport Field in the super regional round.
• Matt Thaiss tallied two hits to extend his team lead with 23 multi-hit games.
• With his eighth-inning RBI, Kenny Towns increased his UVa record for career RBI in the NCAA Tournament to 20.
• RHP Connor Jones went 7.0 innings. It marked the seventh start in a row for the sophomore where he went seven innings or more.
• Jones yielded only three hits, the fewest giving up two hits to Florida State over 4.1 innings. The three hits is the fewest Jones has given up this season when going at least seven innings.
• RHP Josh Sborz picked up his second save of the NCAA Tournament. Sborz has had a hand in all four of UVa’s wins in the 2015 NCAA Tournament. He has one win and two saves.
• UVa tagged Maryland starter Mike Shawaryn for seven hits, tying for the second-most base hits by a Terrapins’ opponent against the right-handed pitcher in 2015.
• UVa was 3-for-5 with runners in scoring position in the Cavaliers’ five-run eighth inning. Virginia was 0-for-8 the rest of the game with runner’s in scoring position.
• Leadoff hitter Adam Haseley was 0-for-5 and didn’t reach base. His team-high streak of 14 games reaching base was snapped.
• Twenty-three of Virginia’s 28 runs in the NCAA Tournament have scored in the sixth inning or later.

MARYLAND POST-GAME NOTES
• Maryland is 9-10 all-time in the NCAA Tournament.
• Maryland is 1-3 all-time in the super regional round.
• Maryland managed only four hits against Virginia. It marked only the sixth time all season Maryland didn’t tally at least five hits.
• Maryland pitching yielded 10 hits to UVa. It was the 19th time this season an opponent has reached double figures in hits.
• Maryland struck out five UVa batters, all swinging.
• UMD was 1-for-10 with runners on base.
• UMD leadoff hitters were 5-of-9.
• UMD pitchers limited UVa to 1-of-10 hitting with two outs.
• Maryland starting pitcher Mike Shawaryn yielded seven hits to UVa. The seven hits tied for the second-most base hits by a Terrapins’ opponent against the right-handed pitcher in 2015.
• RHP Kevin Mooney picked up his first loss of the season and his first blown save after allowing three earned runs in the top of the eighth inning.

University of Virginia Quotes
Virginia Coach Brian O’Connor

Opening Statement:
“I am certainly really proud of our team today. The first seven innings, from an offensive standpoint, we had opportunities and just couldn’t get a run on the board. That is a credit to their pitcher, (Mike) Shawaryn, who did a great job to pitch us tough. For me, the story of today’s ballgame was Connor (Jones) going out there and giving us the sixth and seventh inning, to give us a chance to do what we did in the eighth.”

On being one win from Omaha:
“The way I look at it is that we have another opportunity to play tomorrow that we earned. Once you start thinking about being one win away from something, whether it be Omaha or a national championship, you can cloud your thoughts a little bit. This team has certainly earned the opportunity to play tomorrow. They will come out and be aggressive and loose, like they have been in this postseason. I look at this as a treat. This is fun. This group has been a true joy to coach.”

On offensive struggles over the first seven innings:
“I think it had to do a lot with Mike Shawaryn. He is pretty good. He has 13 wins on the year for a reason. He has the ability to rise his game up to a different level at the most important times. That is probably the greatest quality you can have as a pitcher. There were a couple of times where if we could have just put the ball in play off of him, we would have had a run. The youth of this ball club maybe plays a little bit of it. We have a different kind of offensive team than we did last year. We have to grind out more at bats. That is what makes this special. This is a group that takes pride in hanging in there.”

On Connor Jones getting through a jam in the fifth inning:
“I was hoping he could give us one more (inning). I didn’t know that he could give us the seventh. I was really glad that we only gave up two in that fifth inning. There was a chance it could have been more. Coach Kuhn and I talked and we agreed that he had to go out there and give us the sixth. After he got through the sixth, he needed to pitch us through the seventh. You want to win today, but you have to look at it as a three-game series. He has to do his job as our first starter and hold us there to give us a chance to not deplete our bullpen for the next day.”

Virginia starting pitcher Connor Jones
On the fifth inning: “I felt like I kind of lost it there for a minute. I felt like I was trying to be too fine at certain times.”

On second inning double-play: “The double-play was huge for me. I’ve always been told the walks will even themselves out with some of the double plays I get with my fastball, so I always tend to look for that as an opportunity to get myself out of jams.”

Virginia leftfielder Kevin Doherty
On his 3-RBI double: “I knew there was a high percentage chance he would throw me a fastball because of prior at-bats. I took the mentality to be very aggressive and pretty much don’t let a fastball for a strike get past me. I was aggressive and it all kind of worked out from there.”

On team winning late:
“This whole season we have had some heartbreaking losses and had to come back from tough situations and we are kind of used to it all season. We just take that into every single at bat and the guys are doing a great job of that.”

Virginia third baseman Kenny Towns
On the offense coming up big late in the game: “One thing we really like to focus on later in the game is, `Is that your best at-bat of the day?’, because it really doesn’t matter what you do up to that point. Whether you had bad at-bats or good at-bats, it comes down to doing your job at the end of the game for your team and just giving yourself a chance to win.”

On getting into the Maryland bullpen:
“Shawaryn went out there and was lights out. He used all his pitches well, threw them for strikes, and was keeping us off balance to get us off our groove, but we just kept fighting. Danny (Pinero) put a good swing on breaking ball to kind of get us going and from there Matt (Thaiss) had a really good at-bat and you were able to carry that momentum into the whole inning. We knew we were going to get them, and Mooney came in and we did a good job of keeping calm and having good at-bats.”

University of Maryland Quotes
Maryland Coach John Szefc

Opening Statement:
“Obviously it’s a pretty tough way for us to lose. We really have not lost many games in that fashion in a long time, taking a lead into the eighth like that, but that is the way it goes, when you get to this level, you have to play nine innings and unfortunately we did not do that. I thought Mike (Shawaryn) made a great start. We played pretty good baseball for seven and a third innings and played pretty good defense for the most part, built a three-run lead, so outside of us having a really rough eighth, I felt we played pretty good. It didn’t work out the way we wanted it to, but that’s just the way it goes.”

On how the rest of the series sets up: “We were in a much better position last year clearly after winning the first game, but coming into the a three-game series, you come in knowing you have to win two games. It’s a lot easier when you win the first one, but bottom line when you get to this stage of the season, you have to come ready to play every day and we will be all right. I told our guys that you got here because of your toughness and you’ll stay here because of that and you’ll play again tomorrow because of that. We’ll see what the result is.”

On the decision to intentionally walk Joe McCarthy in the eighth inning:
“That was an easy one (decision). McCarthy was right in the middle of all their success last year, played in Omaha and I can sleep a lot better tonight facing a freshman as opposed to Joe McCarthy. It didn’t work out for us, but we have made decisions like that all year and Kevin Mooney has been very successful for us for three years. Games usually don’t finish that way when he and Mike pitch a game. You’re playing in an end of the year game against a very good team at home and if you’re going to do something special, every one of your better guys has to play special and it wasn’t quite that way for us today.”

Pitcher Mike Shawaryn
On what was working well in the first few innings and then what happened later in the game:
“My command was there the first couple innings and towards the end they started putting together some good at-bats and taking away some stuff. I thought I battled pretty well until then, but today, they were the better team.”

On whether it was frustrating to pitch so well and then watch it unravel:> “It’s not frustrating… that’s just how baseball is. We played really well until that eighth inning and sometimes things just happen that way I think we are going to do a good job of just flushing it. It’s just one of those days and tomorrow we are going to come back ready to compete.”

Centerfielder LaMonte Wade
On the bases-clearing double in the eighth inning that gave Virginia the lead:
“I went back and was listening to (left fielder) Tim (Lewis) communicate on the ball and I just dropped it. I hit the wall and missed the ball at the same time.”

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