UVA Baseball Finds Itself in Unfamiliar Position

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

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — On a gloomy, wet afternoon, the field at Disharoon Park sat empty Tuesday, but not because of the weather.

For the University of Virginia baseball team, a season that began with enormous promise officially ended when the NCAA tournament field was announced Monday afternoon. The Cavaliers were not among the 64 teams in the bracket, and so a program that’s accustomed to playing in June finds itself in an unfamiliar position as May draws to a close.

“My heart aches for the young men who wear our uniform that we do not have an opportunity to play this weekend,” head coach Brian O’Connor said Tuesday afternoon at the Dish.

In its 22^nd season under O’Connor, UVA finished with a 32-18 overall record. This marks the first time since 2019 that Virginia has missed the NCAA tournament.

“You get what you earn in life,” O’Connor said. “That’s a little bit of the lesson, right? And sometimes in this sport, in college baseball at the highest level, it comes down to a game or two, whether or not you earn the opportunity. And then it comes down to a game or a pitch or a play when you do get the opportunity, whether you win it and advance on. And the margins are very, very small to get into the NCAA tournament when you put yourself in the position that we did.”

The Wahoos, who began the season ranked in the top five nationally, slogged through the first half of their schedule. They won 16 of their final 19 regular-season games to move into contention for at-large bid to the NCAA tournament, but the Hoos’ weak ACC and non-conference schedules hurt them in the eyes of the selection committee.

Also damaging was UVA’s early exit from the ACC tournament in Durham. After earning a first-round bye as the No. 6 seed, Virginia lost to No. 14 seed Boston College in the second round. For the season, UVA went 1-3 against BC.

Still, O’Connor said, “I don’t think that [Virginia’s exclusion] came down to one game. I think it’s easy for people to say, ‘Well, had they played better against Boston College in the ACC tournament, or had they won that game, things would be different.’

“That’s too much to put on a group of young men … In baseball, it’s over a long season. And I remind guys of that throughout the season: ‘Hey, this game in front of us, this midweek game, you don’t know which one it’ll be that gets you in or doesn’t get you in.’ And we just didn’t do that consistently enough, and I own that as the leader of the program.”

One of the nation’s hottest teams late in the season, Virginia won its final four ACC series. The Cavaliers finished sixth in the ACC, a game and a half behind regular-season champion Georgia Tech.

For the season, UVA hit .309 and averaged 7.98 runs per game. The team’s earned-run average was 4.68.

Six Cavaliers received All-ACC recognition. Henry Godbout and Henry Ford were named to the second team; Jacob Ference, Eric Becker and Aidan Teel to the third team; and pitcher Tomas Valincius to the all-freshman team.

“To do what we did in this conference in the back part of the year was incredibly impressive, what they accomplished,” O’Connor said. “The fact that we didn’t get into the NCAA tournament yesterday does not diminish how these guys stood up in the back half the year and played their best baseball. Unfortunately, it just wasn’t enough in the first half in a few games that cost us the opportunity. And that’s what it came down to.”

With the addition of Cal and Stanford last year, the ACC became a 16-team league for baseball. Each team was scheduled to play 30 conference games during the regular season: 10 three-game series.

The Cavaliers posted a 16-11 record in ACC play during the regular season, but they did not face North Carolina, Clemson, Wake Forest or Louisville, all of which made the NCAA tournament. Another team that will play in the NCAAs, Florida State, was on UVA’s schedule, but that series was canceled in the wake of a campus shooting in Tallahassee, Fla.

As the season unfolded, O’Connor was aware that Virginia’s strength of schedule in ACC play might take a hit. Even so, he figured that if the Cavaliers performed well in non-conference games, their postseason résumé would be solid.

“And we didn’t do that,” he said.

Virginia lost six games to non-conference opponents: two to Liberty and one each to Richmond, Oklahoma, Oregon State and Michigan. Of that group, only Oklahoma and Oregon State are headed to the NCAA tournament.

“Historically in this program, at least over the last three years or so, we have dominated outside of the conference,” O’Connor said, “and we didn’t dominate this year. We had some flaws.”

Not only did Virginia struggle uncharacteristically in non-conference games, but three of the in-state rivals on its schedule (VCU, ODU and JMU) had down years, which further hurt the Cavaliers’ RPI.

O’Connor doesn’t believe UVA’s approach to scheduling needs major revisions. “It’s allowed us to host [NCAA] regionals and super regionals,” he said. “It didn’t this year, because we didn’t take care of what we traditionally take care of … Sometimes it comes down to a game or two. I just feel horrible as the leader of the program that our young men don’t have an opportunity to compete to go to Omaha to have a chance to win a national championship.”

During O’Connor’s tenure, the Hoos have been regulars in the NCAA tournament, and they’ve advanced to the College World Series seven times (2009, 2011, 2014, 2015, 2021, 2023, 2024). UVA was crowned NCAA champion in 2015.

“And so I think it’s important to keep things in perspective that this is one season that fell a little bit short, but what this program has accomplished over a long period of time stands up,” O’Connor said.

After returning from their short stay in Durham, the Cavaliers practiced at Disharoon Park through the weekend. “We prepared like we were into the tournament,” O’Connor said.

Upsets abounded in conference tournaments around the country over the weekend, and the Hoos knew they were on the NCAA bubble by the time the selection show started Monday. O’Connor wanted his players to watch the show. Virginia was still hopeful that its name would be called, but “if we didn’t get in, I wanted them to know what it felt like,” O’Connor said, “and that feeling then carries over.”

It’s too early to say what the Cavaliers’ roster will look like next season. The Major League Baseball draft will be held in July, and many of UVA’s top players are eligible to be selected. Some of them are out of college eligibility, but others could return to school in 2025-26.

“They have to look at what is the best decision for them to make, and there’s a lot of time for that to play out,” O’Connor said.

He began exit interviews with his players Tuesday. Once those meetings conclude, O’Connor said, he’ll “step back and take a deep dive into our program and assess where do we need to get better. What adjustments need to be made? If you don’t do that as a leader of whatever you do, then you’re not holding up your end of the bargain. So we’ve got to get better in a lot of areas, we know that. And those will be addressed.”

As they have in recent years, the Cavaliers will look to the transfer portal to fill specific needs. “We’re presently doing that, and that’s ongoing,” O’Connor said.

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