Making the NCAAs is great but UVa isn't satisfied with that alone
For the veterans on the Virginia baseball team, it was a moment worth watching on the jumbo screen.
The Wahoos got the news they were expecting on Monday afternoon, when they were officially announced as one of the 64 teams that will compete in NCAA regionals this weekend. The No. 3 seed in the Columbia Regional, UVa will face host South Carolina at noon Friday. No. 11 national seed Old Dominion and No. 4 regional seed Jacksonville will also travel to South Carolina to meet on Friday, the opening day of the four-team double-elimination tournament.
With the sun beaming down on Disharoon Park, the Cavaliers spread out folding chairs in the outfield and watched Monday’s selection show on the center field scoreboard’s big screen. Even if the moment lacked drama beyond where they would be headed, seeing ‘Virginia’ pop up in the regional bracket was a burden lifted for Devin Ortiz and other fourth-year players on the roster, who were in high school the last time that had happened.
“Yesterday was a very exciting day for all of us, and we definitely enjoyed it,” Ortiz said on Tuesday. “We soaked it in and enjoyed the moment. But I think everyone understands that today is a new day and tomorrow is a new day, and this weekend, it’s coming up. It’s not going to be easy, but the most important thing is to enjoy the moment while we’re there.”
For coach Brian O’Connor, Monday marked the return of a familiar Memorial Day routine. In each of his first 14 seasons at UVa, the Wahoos played postseason baseball. Four of those teams reached the College World Series, including the 2015 national champions. But the 2018 team failed to reach a regional and the same thing happened the following year before last summer’s NCAA Tournament was cancelled due to COVID-19.
O’Connor said Tuesday he and his coaching staff never took that streak of NCAA appearances for granted.
“It’s hard to get there,” he said. “When you have 30 automatic bids and there’s only 34 at-large bids or so, it’s pretty narrow to get yourself in there. So we feel great to be back in the mix and hopefully this is something we can build on and start with another streak about having this opportunity.
“That said, it’s about advancing,” the head coach added. “We’re not in this to participate. We’re in this to go win this thing so we can have a chance to win a series next weekend to advance on to Omaha.”
Virginia has won seven of its nine games since the team’s nine-day break in early May for final exams, including a run to the semifinals of last week’s ACC Tournament in Charlotte with a pair of victories in pool play. Since their season hit its low point at 11-14 overall and 4-12 in the ACC on April 2nd—a nadir that put their postseason hopes in serious jeopardy before the midway point of the schedule—the Wahoos have won two-thirds of their total games (18-9).
From their perspective, they’ve spent the past two months playing elimination series just to get into the NCAA Tournament. They’re confident that approach will help them as they head to Columbia.
“I think it brought the team together for sure,” Ortiz explained. “It showed us that we’re playing well with our backs against the wall, and we’re going to keep doing that and keep playing with a chip on our shoulder. And keep playing for one another. That’s the most important thing.”
But Ortiz did concede that this weekend’s regional will be a bigger stage than the current Cavaliers have played on previously. It’s on the UVa coaches to prepare those players for postseason baseball as best they can before Friday’s opener. It reminds O’Connor, who has a 48-32 record in NCAA Tournament games at Virginia, of the first time one of his teams reached the College World Series in 2009.
“A regional is a little bit different (from regular season games),” said O’Connor, who has previously managed six UVa teams beyond the first weekend of the tournament. “Yeah, it’s all on the line, either you win or you go home, there’s that aspect of it and these guys have played in front of big crowds and meaningful games in the past, but just kind of what you have to do to win a regional.”
O’Connor’s early message to his team this week has been to stay focused on Friday’s opener against the Gamecocks—the head coach declined to name a starting pitcher for that game on Tuesday, though All-ACC lefty Andrew Abbott is likely to get the nod—and keep the same do-or-die approach that has served the Cavaliers well since early April.
“We’ve been playing with our backs against the wall for a long time, and obviously we have a chip on our shoulder and things are going really well for us,” fifth-year catcher Logan Michaels said. “So I think just continuing to play the game the same way. I understand that it is a regional, but at the same time it is just a baseball game, and so we’ve just got to take it as we’re just playing a baseball game, play our game, and just try to play our best baseball game that we can, and good things will happen.”
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