Cavaliers' Turnaround Nets Return Trip to Omaha

By Sean Ryan

CollegeBaseballInsider.com Co-Founder

sryan@hodgespart.com @collbaseball

 

Editor’s note: Sean Ryan covered the first day of this year’s Super Regional in Charlottesville but was not in attendance on Saturday.

 

There was a sense of giddiness from Brian O’Connor on Friday evening.

 

His Virginia team had just scored five runs in the eighth inning against one of the nation’s best closers to steal a 5-3 win to open Super Regional play against Maryland.

 

Surely a win like that will make a coach giddy. But this was different. There seemed a sense of amazement, a sense of how in the world are we one win from the College World Series?

 

O’Connor said, “It’s a treat, it’s been a lot of fun” and “I’m just soaking it in, quite frankly, enjoying it as long as it lasts.”

 

It will last at least another week for the Cavaliers, who trumped the Terps late for the second straight day. Virginia rallied for three runs in the bottom of the ninth Saturday, the final two coming in on Ernie Clement’s hit down the left-field line of a 5-4 win that stirred memories of the Cavaliers improbable 2011 comeback Super Regional win against UC Irvine that sent them to Omaha.

 

That Virginia’s baseball program is returning to Omaha isn’t a surprise: In a preseason CollegeBaseballInsider.com survey of Division I coaches, the Cavaliers trailed only Vanderbilt in teams predicted to reach Omaha.

 

That this Virginia baseball team is returning to Omaha is.

 

Entering their weekend series against Miami, the Cavaliers were 7-11 in the ACC, 22-14 overall and hovering on the NCAA Tournament bubble with an RPI of 47. Things seemed to be looking up. Star outfielder Joe McCarthy had just made his debut after preseason back surgery – a big lift to an offense that also had missed .350-hitter John La Prise for all but four games. Virginia got a series win over Miami, but in the Friday-night game, lost lefty ace Nathan Kirby to injury.

 

One week later, the Cavaliers dropped two of three at NC State and were 10-14 in the ACC and on no one’s radar as a candidate for Omaha. Even after the ACC Tournament, when the Cavaliers won their play-in game then lost three straight, Virginia limped into the NCAA Tournament as a 3-seed.

 

But here they are, finishing their sixth Super Regional in the past seven years and returning to Omaha for the second straight year and fourth time since 2009.

 

Which is a tremendous credit to O’Connor and his partners in crime, Kevin McMullan and Karl Kuhn, who have been with O’Connor every step of dozen delirious years at Davenport Field. They’ve patched together a lineup and rotation beleaguered by as many significant injuries in one season as they’ve encountered in their Virginia tenure.

 

Take Friday’s hero Kevin Doherty. A lightly used pitcher for two years, Doherty lobbied the coaches to let him get some swings and help the depleted outfield and ended up hitting the three-run double to beat Maryland. This wasn’t a Joe Koshansky, Sean Doolittle or Danny Hultzen, two-way stars brought to Charlottesville because of their arms and bats. This was an emergency plug-in.

 

In short, this is O’Connor and company’s finest coaching hour.

 

And they’re having fun with it, with O’Connor taking his first selfie at a press conference before the Super Regional started and his coaching mates, rather than his players, surprising him with a cooler-shower during an ESPN interview. The coaches even took part in the dogpile on the Davenport infield.

 

They know this edition has had its flaws and that the road has been much harder. They also know that their team is deserving of another trip to Omaha in what has become a very special season. That's what makes the journey all the better.