No. 14 Virginia Wraps Homestand on Tuesday

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. – No. 14 Virginia (16-4) will play the final game of a five-game homestand on Tuesday when it hosts Georgetown (13-6) at Disharoon Park on Tuesday (March 19). The contest will be streamed live on ACCNX with first pitch set for 4 p.m.

HOW TO FOLLOW
Watch: ACCNX
Listen: n/a
Live Stats: VirginiaSports.com

Probable Starting Pitchers
Tuesday – 4 p.m.
Georgetown: RHP Matthew Sapienza (0-0, 18.00 ERA, 1.0 IP, 1 BB, 1 SO)
Virginia: LHP Freddy Beruvides Jr. (0-0, 7.71 ERA, 2.1 IP, 2 BB, 4 SO)

LEADING OFF

• The Cavaliers will close out their five-game homestand on Tuesday and play six of their next seven games on the road.
• Virginia is one of 17 schools with 16 or more wins this season. Of the 17 schools, four play in the ACC – Florida State (19), North Carolina (17), Clemson (17) and Virginia (16).
• Georgetown comes into Disharoon Park on a seven-game win streak, tied for the eighth-longest in DI college baseball. Its last loss came against then-No. 1 Wake Forest on March 5 in Winston-Salem, a contest it led 6-2 after four innings.
• Tuesday’s contest will feature two of the top scoring teams in the country, UVA is posting 10.4 runs per game, one of 11 teams nationally posting a double-digit scoring average. Georgetown is scoring 9.4 runs per game, which currently ranks 24th in DI Baseball.
• The Cavaliers are 13-1 against non-conference opponents this season and have won 42 of their last 43 games against non-conference opponents in the regular season.
• Virginia enters the contest with the most hits (257) of any team in the country. The Cavaliers .346 as a team, the fifth-highest average in the nation.
• UVA is 11-2 at home this season and 48-7 in the last 55 games at Disharoon Park.

AGAINST GEORGETOWN

• Tuesday marks only the eighth time UVA and Georgetown have met in the last 30 years. Virginia owns a 6-1 record against the Hoyas under head Coach Brian O’Connor.
• UVA has won seven of the last eight meetings against the Georgetown, including back-to-back 6-4 decisions in 2022 and 2023.
• Last year, Jake Gelof homered twice and Kyle Teel added a solo homer as UVA raced out to a 5-1 advantage after four innings and held on for the victory. Kevin Jaxel recorded his first collegiate win against the Hoyas after pitching 2.2 scoreless innings of relief.
• Virginia Lefthanded pitcher Angelo Tonas started his career at Georgetown and was a four-time member Big East Academic All-Academic Team selection. He logged 115 career innings and struck out 121 batters in a Georgetown uniform. He matched a program record with 30 appearances in the 2022 season.

ON THE MOUND

• True freshman Freddy Beruvides Jr. will get the start for the second-straight Tuesday. He has made three appearances for the Cavaliers, including first collegiate start against William & Mary last on March 12.
• Beruvides made a brief appearance against Wake Forest on Saturday, throwing just three pitches to get the final out of the top of the ninth inning.
• Against William & Mary, Beruvides got the first four outs of the game, including a season-best three strikeouts. He surrendered a first inning homer before fanning the next three batters.

COMEBACK CAVS

• UVA has faced a deficit in 15 of the 20 games this season and recorded 11 come-from-behind victories.
• The Cavaliers have recorded three walk-off victories and three wins when erasing a deficit of five or more runs.
• Of the Cavaliers 11 come-from-behind victories, the largest came against then-No. 18 Iowa on Feb. 24 in Jacksonville, Fla. where UVA trailed by six runs. They trailed by five runs in the opener against Wake Forest and five runs after the seventh inning stretch in the finale against the Demon Deacons.
• Virginia is 6-1 this season in games decided by one or two runs and have gone to extra innings on three different occasions. The Cavalier had seven one or two-run victories in all of 2023.
• Remarkably, UVA is 8-2 when opponents score first and 7-2 when opponents score in the first inning. Virginia has scored 39 runs in the sixth inning this season, its most potent frame.
• Prior to UVA’s 5-4, 10-inning walk-off win against Wichita State on Feb. 23, the Cavaliers had lost 39-straight games when trailing after seven.

DOWN GOES NO. 7

• Virginia took two out of three against then-No. 7 Wake Forest on March 15-17, a matchup of the defending Atlantic and Coastal Division Champions. The Demon Deacons were the country’s consensus preseason No. 1 team and held the position for each of the first three weeks of the season.
• Virginia had a total of 15,278 fans at Disharoon Park over the three-game stretch including a sellout (5,919) for Saturday’s middle game. The sellout was Virginia’s first ever in the month of March.
• The Cavaliers won their seventh-straight series against Wake Forest at Disharoon Park. The Cavaliers are 17-4 against Wake Forest in Charlottesville under head coach Brian O’Connor.
• The series win was Virginia’s first over a top-10 foe in the regular season since taking two out of three against then-No. 7 NC State in 2020. The 2020 season was canceled four days later due to the CoVID19 pandemic.

ONE OF THE NATION’S TOP OFFENSES

• Virginia’s .346 team batting average is the fifth-highest of any college baseball team this season.
• The Cavaliers are ranked in the top-10 in five other categories: hits (1st – 257), doubles (3rd – 56), runs (7th – 207), scoring (6th – 10.4 rpg) and on-base percentage (10th – .448).
• The Cavaliers lead the ACC runs scored, hits and doubles.
• Last season, Virginia led the country in batting average, doubles and hits. It ranked in the top-10 in seven different offensive categories.

PLAYER NOTABLES

• Ethan Anderson, who was at the plate for UVA’s walk-off win on Sunday vs. Wake Forest, is the only Cavalier to reach base safely in all 20 games this season after a 1-for-4 effort at the plate in the finale. He is currently riding a nine-game hitting streak.
• Jacob Ference put together his fifth multi-home run performance of his career and first as a Cavalier on Sunday against Wake Forest. He had four two-home run games at Salisbury University. Ference went 5-for-8 with five runs scored, two doubles, three home runs, five RBI and racked up 16 total bases in two starts against the Demon Deacons.
• Henry Ford enters Tuesday with 31 hits, tied for the most of any freshman in the country. He currently co-leads UVA in multi-hit (10) and multi-RBI games (9).
• Casey Saucke, was UVA’s hottest hitter going into the Wake Forest series but was 0-for-11 going into his dramatic 9th-inning homer in the weekend finale, tying the game at 10 with two outs. His 26-game reached base streak that date back to last season’s postseason run came to a close on Saturday.
• The power surge put forth by Harrison Didawick this season has already seen him double his home run total from a year ago. The second year outfielder is tied for third in the ACC with nine home runs, four of which have come in ACC play. In addition, Didawick is carrying UVA’s longest hitting streak (10 games) into Tuesday’s midweek contest.
• Henry Godbout is statistically the ACC’s toughest player to strikeout. He has gone down on strikes just three times in 61 at bats. He and Anderson were the only Cavaliers in the starting lineup that didn’t strikeout in Wake Forest righthander Chase Burns’ 13-K performance on Saturday. Godbout tagged Burns for a homer in the second inning after he fanned four of the first five batters. It was only the third homer surrendered by Burns in 30.1 innings this season.