Cavaliers Focus on Staying in Moment

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

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — As April winds down, the postseason for college baseball is almost visible on the horizon.

The bracketologists at D1Baseball and Baseball America posted NCAA tournament projections early this week, and each had Virginia as a No. 2 seed in a four-team regional.

UVA has 14 games left on its regular-season schedule, including ACC series against Pittsburgh, California and Louisville. Then comes the ACC tournament in Charlotte, N.C.

With a strong finish to the regular season and a good showing in Charlotte, the Cavaliers could play their way into a top-16 seed in the NCAA tournament and be be selected as a regional host. But head coach Chris Pollard said he hasn’t discussed postseason scenarios with his team, and he doesn’t plan to do so anytime soon.

“Never comes up,” Pollard said Wednesday night after No. 10 Virginia rallied to defeat Liberty 5-4 at Disharoon Park. “We never address it. We try to be 1-0 every day. So today was about facing off against a really good Liberty team.”

The Wahoos “woke up 0-0 trying to be 1-0,” Pollard said. “We don't talk about anything other than trying to win the day that we have. I think we talk a lot about being process-driven. and process only knows now. And that's what we try to do, be really good at winning now.”

Coming off a series win over ACC foe Clemson, UVA hosted a Liberty team that had won 14 of its previous 16 games. The Flames had rallied to knock off another ACC team, Duke, in Lynchburg on Tuesday, and they led Virginia 4-1 after four-and-a-half innings. But the Hoos scored two runs in the bottom of the fifth and two in the sixth, after which relievers Lucas Hartman and Tyler Kapa extinguished the Flames.

Virginia (29-13) entered the game with a RPI of 20, and Liberty (29-11) was at 22. This was their second meeting of the season. In the first, the Cavaliers built a 10-run lead and went on to defeat the Flames 14-12 on March 18 in Lynchburg.

The rematch featured fewer offensive highlights, with pitchers taking center stage.

“It felt like two teams going toe-to-toe that are both playing really well,” said Pollard, who’s in his first year at Virginia.

“It’s a big win for us against a really solid ball club,” junior third baseman Noah Murray said.

For UVA, Max Stammel, who had been a weekend starter this season, struck out five and walked none in 3.2 innings.

“It just got me back on track,” he said.

A sophomore left-hander, Stammel is “a guy that's been grinding, had a couple of tough outings, had to move to the midweek,” Pollard said. “No complaint, no pout. Just continued to work at his craft. And I thought that was maybe as good as Max Stammel has looked all year.”

Of moving to a midweek role, Stammel said, “I was excited. I love to pitch, whatever. That's mainly my thing. As long as I'm going out on the field, I'm a happy man.”

Liberty scored three runs off senior right-hander Kevin Jaxel, only one of which was earned, but freshman right-hander Thomas Stewart shined in the sixth, and Hartman and Kapa took it from there.

For the season, Hartman is 8-0 with a 2.39 earned-run average. Kapa has a 1.48 ERA. Both were named semifinalists for prestigious awards on Wednesday: Hartman for National Pitcher of the Year and Stopper of the Year, and Kapa for Stopper of the Year.

A graduate transfer from Western Kentucky, Hartman has made a team-high 24 appearances this season. Asked what makes the 5-foot-10, 211-pound right-hander so durable, Hartman’s head coach smiled.

“I don't know,” Pollard said. “They should study him, like a science experiment. He's incredible at bouncing back. He's very, very resilient.

“Part of it's just toughness. Part of it is he takes the ball some days even when he doesn't feel good. Now, he is a guy that bounces back quickly. But he's also a guy that always wants the ball, always wants to compete. And sometimes when you always want the ball and you want to compete, sometimes you convince yourself you feel a little better than you really do.”

Hartman’s explanation? “When I was younger I threw a lot, so I guess that helps in building up my arm, but I'm not really sure.”

Junior catcher Jake Weatherspoon’s home run in the fourth cut Liberty’s lead to 3-1. In the fifth, freshman shortstop RJ Holmes led off with a single and then went to second on a balk. A throwing error on a Murray bunt allowed Holmes to score, and Harrison Didawick followed with a single. Two batters later, Antonio Perrotta’s groundout scored Murray and made it 4-3.

Murray, who bats ninth, came into the game hitting .164, but he had perhaps the game’s biggest hit: a sixth-inning single that drove in Zach Jackson and Holmes, giving the Cavaliers a lead they did not relinquish.

“I'm proud of him,” Pollard said of Murray. “The whole bottom of the lineup right there was awesome ... I thought we got production from a lot of different spots in the lineup tonight.”

The Wednesday winner 🫡#GoHoos pic.twitter.com/U6gUhfdO2Y

— Virginia Baseball (@UVABaseball) April 23, 2026

Virginia took the field Wednesday without two of its top players: junior center-fielder AJ Gracia and junior shortstop Eric Becker.

Gracia, who has missed the past two games for medical reasons, is hitting .331 with a team-high 12 home runs. Becker, who’s been dealing with an upper-body injury, has missed Virginia’s past three games. He’s hitting .318 with seven homers and a team-high 13 doubles.

Pollard said both players “are day to day.” Next up for UVA, which is 12-9 in ACC play, is a three-game series at Pitt (25-14, 7-11). They’re scheduled meet at 6 p.m. Friday, 3 p.m. Saturday and 1 p.m. Sunday.

The Cavaliers head to Pittsburgh on a two-game winning streak. Virginia clinched its series win over Clemson with a 5-4 victory at the Dish on Saturday afternoon.

“If I'm being honest, I challenged our guys on Saturday before the game in a big way,” Pollard said, “and, man, have they answered the call.”

The comeback against Liberty, Pollard said, “shows the grit of this group. I think the last two games, we've kind of flexed our toughness a little bit. This team hasn't always been tough. You go back to the fall, and you go back to early in the year, we needed to grow into some toughness. And we've started to become a really tough group.”

With All-ACC candidates Gracia and Becker sidelined, Murray said, the key has been “everybody stepping up and doing their job. Obviously, we miss those guys a lot, but everybody's got a job to do, and we're just all out here trying to do our best with it.”

The Cavaliers will start a seven-game homestand Tuesday night against George Mason. They’ll close the regular season with a three-game series (May 14-16) at Louisville.

 Pollard’s players know the postseason is fast approaching, but “we’re just trying to stay in the moment as much as we can,” Murray said. “That’s the challenge, right? Because as you get to that part of the year, it's hard to not think about that coming up, but really our job as a team is to stay present and stay engaged and just put our best foot forward where we are in that moment to go out and win the ball game in front of us.”

Hartman said Pollard “makes it pretty easy to focus on [the task at hand]. Even during the weekend, we're not focused on the next game. We're focused on the task at hand and focused on how we can get that win.”

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