Cavaliers Continue Building Momentum

By Jeff White (jwhite@virginia.edu)
VirginiaSports.com

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — In less than a week, the University of Virginia baseball team has gone from slumping to surging.

In its series opener against ACC newcomer Stanford last Thursday night, UVA won 11-8 to end a five-game losing streak, and Friday and Saturday brought two more victories for the home team at Disharoon Park.

Midweek games have proved uncharacteristically challenging this season for the Cavaliers, who lost to Richmond on March 19 and Liberty on March 25, but they built a 10-1 lead on Old Dominion on Tuesday night en route to an 11-5 victory at the Dish.

“Momentum in this game is a big thing,” sophomore shortstop Eric Becker said. “So, again, we’re just trying to build off it.”

For the Wahoos (16-11 overall, 6-6 ACC), now comes a three-game series against NC State (19-10, 5-4) at Doak Field in Raleigh, N.C. Like Virginia, the Wolfpack advanced to the College World Series last year and hopes to be back in Omaha, Neb., this June.

“They’ve got a high-quality ball club,” UVA head coach Brian O’Connor said, “and so our guys are looking forward to trying to repeat playing really, really great baseball. That’s the challenge we have in front of us. And that’ll be a tough environment down there, and our guys will look forward to it.”

After edging Maryland in Fredericksburg on March 11, UVA flew to the West Coast and took two of three games from the California Golden Bears in Berkeley, Calif. The Cavaliers appeared to have steadied themselves after an uneven start to the season, but then they promptly lost five straight games.

Back at Disharoon Park for a pivotal series with Stanford, Virginia scored 33 runs in three games and secured a dramatic win in the Saturday finale on a walk-off double by Aidan Teel in the bottom of the 10^th inning.

With ODU coming to town on Tuesday, O’Connor said, he reminded his players that “it was great what we did [against] Stanford, but you have to sustain it. Great ball clubs sustain the energy and the enthusiasm. We talked about that, like how are we going to show up tonight? Are we going to show up ready to play? Certainly they responded, and that’s been a trademark of our program for a long time.”

As he had in the Stanford series, Teel batted leadoff against the Monarchs (8-18). He crushed a two-run home run to right field in the fifth, extending Virginia’s lead to 9-1, and finished 3-for-4 with a career-high four RBIs.

“Wherever you are in the lineup, you have to do your job,” Teel said, “and your job is to get on base for this team. In the leadoff spot, I just enjoy setting the tone. I like being aggressive in earlier counts and it allows me to do that and just get after it from pitch one.”

Becker, hitting second, went 4-for-6 to raise his batting average from .340 to .357.

“You’ve got a chance to have a pretty good offensive day when the top of your lineup does that,” O’Connor said.

Their record-setting offense carried the Cavaliers to Omaha last season. Many of Virginia’s top hitters from that team are back this year, but several had struggled at the plate early in the season. Even so, O’Connor remained confident Virginia’s offense would come around.

Junior third baseman Luke Hanson went into the Stanford series hitting .206. He came out hitting .264.

“When you have talented players like that, that have done it before, for a lot of them it’s just a matter of time,” O’Connor said. “And to see what Luke Hanson has done over the last week is really impressive. You knew some of those guys would get going. It was just a matter of making some adjustments, and they have. And that’s made a difference in our lineup here for four ball games.”

Junior left-hander Bradley Hodges, who missed most of last season with an elbow injury, started for UVA against ODU. His workload continues to grow, and he took another step forward Tuesday night.

In a career-long 3.2 innings, Hodges struck out six and walked only one. O’Connor said he expects Hodges to play an important role late in the regular season, “and he’s starting to show that right now … The more that he builds up, it gives us other options. Maybe at some point if he continues to pitch well, he could move to the weekend and we could move some things around. It first requires him to pitch great baseball, and he certainly did tonight.”

Virginia used seven pitchers Tuesday night. O’Connor praised the performance of left-hander Matthew Buchanan—“He’s been an importance piece to our bullpen”—and liked how right-hander Ryan Osinski closed the game.

“Things were getting a little hairy there for a little bit,” O’Connor said.

After right-hander Drew Koenen walked in two runs in the top of the seventh to make it 10-5, Osinski took over and quelled ODU’s comeback. In 2.1 innings, the 6-foot-6, 230-pound junior struck out four and allowed only one hit.

“It was good to see Ryan come in there and close that inning and then finish the game off,” O’Connor said. “We need more guys that will do that on a consistent basis, and Ryan is one of them that is capable. He just needs to do it on a more frequent basis.”

The Cavaliers’ late-game lapses aside, O’Connor said he was “really proud to see our guys come out at the beginning of the game and execute and play with energy.”

Becker said it “was a big point of emphasis just to start the game with a bunch of energy, finish off where we started with the walk-off win against Stanford.”

The Hoos approached the game “with a weekend mentality,” Teel said, and were rewarded with a victory. They’ll look to extend their winning streak when they take on NC State in Raleigh.

“This weekend, it just gives us another opportunity to compete and do what we do as a team and just keep building our résumé of going back to Omaha,” Teel said.

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