O’Connor Tabbed Coach of the Year
Kuhn, McMullan Provide Continuity for Cavaliers
In the weeks following the first national championship in program history, there was little time for Virginia’s baseball coaches to celebrate the Cavaliers’ unlikely run to legendary Omaha status.
Sure, there was an on-campus welcome that drew more than 4,000 fans to the school’s basketball arena upon the team’s arrival in Charlottesville. But a couple days later, Virginia hosted a baseball camp on campus. Assistant coaches Kevin McMullan and Karl Kuhn immediately went back on the road.
“It’s definitely sunk in,” Cavaliers coach Brian O’Connor said in late July. “But we haven’t had the chance to celebrate.”
Kuhn, who went recruiting at an event at East Carolina a couple days after returning from Omaha, said a couple weeks later that he was really looking forward to celebrating but noted, “The longer you play, the more weeks you’re missing.”
That Virginia’s Three Musketeers went right back to work shouldn’t come as a surprise. That’s been a staple of the Cavaliers program since O’Connor was hired in the summer of 2003 and enlisted Kuhn and McMullan to join him.
That O’Connor and Co. – in their 12th season together, which is almost unheard of in college baseball – won a national title also shouldn’t come as a surprise.
The way the 2015 Cavaliers did so, however, was unconventional to say the least.
After being tabbed in the preseason as a favorite alongside Vanderbilt to win the national championship, the Cavaliers: lost their two biggest bats before the season even started; lost their No. 1 catcher for a spell early in the season; lost their No. 1 pitcher for a huge chunk of the season; turned to a seldom-used pitcher to play the outfield; turned to its club baseball team for reinforcements; and endured an 18-18 March and April, putting them on the brink of missing the NCAA Tournament for the first time in the O’Connor era. Even the mild-mannered O’Connor was suspended for four games in March for losing his cool and bumping an umpire on Friday the 13th in the first game of Virginia Tech’s weekend sweep of the Cavaliers.
Simply put, 2015 was the toughest season on record for O’Connor for most of the season.
As McMullan put it, “A month left in the season, we’ve got a straw sticking out of the pond. And a month later, we’re doing the back stroke.”
The back stroke. The dog pile. Call it what you will. O’Connor, flanked by close friends and cohorts Kuhn and McMullan, pulled off his best coaching job yet, guiding the Cavaliers from a No. 3 seed in a West Coast Regional and a home Super Regional win to their fourth College World Series appearance since 2009 and the first national championship for an ACC school since 1955.
“I always knew Brian would win, but no one could have predicted 550 wins in 12 seasons, and now a national title,” best-selling author and Virginia booster John Grisham wrote in an email to CollegeBaseballInsider.com.
For the second time, O’Connor is the CollegeBaseballInsider.com National Coach of the Year.
***
On a warm May evening in Charlottesville in 2004, Virginia roughed up Florida State 15-2. A third baseman named Ryan Zimmerman had five hits and a pair of RBI, and fellow future major leaguers Mark Reynolds and Joe Koshansky each had two hits, two runs and two RBI.
The Cavaliers, ranked seventh in the nation at the time – the highest in the program’s history to date – ended up losing the series to the Seminoles. But that night left an indelible mark: Virginia, playing in front of a raucous packed house, had arrived as a program.
O’Connor, the rookie head coach, said that night: “It was an opportunity for us to really continue to make a name for ourselves this year. And we did that tonight.” FSU coach Mike Martin countered that night: “It’s exciting for me to see baseball in this atmosphere in Charlottesville. This is great for the league, it’s great for college baseball.”
The scene was drastically different from past years.
In the five years before the 2004 season, which ended with 44 wins and a Regional appearance, Virginia averaged 25 wins a season. In the previous 18 years, the Cavaliers reached the NCAA Tournament one time: future pro Seth Greisinger helped lead them to the 1996 ACC title.
At the turn of the century, Virginia rarely played in front of big crowds. Its field was a hodge-podge of leftover turf from Scott Stadium – home of the football Cavaliers – that made up the infield and a grassy outfield. And the school’s leadership considered drastic changes to the baseball program, considering taking away funding and making it a non-scholarship sport.
Two things changed everything: Virginia supporters, including Grisham, a Charlottesville resident, stepped up to raise the funds that would pave the way for the opening of the gem that is Davenport Field in 2002; and in 2003, the Cavaliers hired Brian O’Connor.
A national title in baseball wasn’t on anyone’s mind.
“No, we were too panicked to think that big,” Grisham wrote in an email. “The proposal was to reduce baseball, as well as all other ‘Olympic sports,’ to club status, basically eliminating all scholarships and stripping all funding. After the initial shock, it became obvious that UVA was not serious about this idea. But it was very motivational, and a handful of donors, including Bill Goodwin, Phil Wendel and the Bryant family, put up the money for the new stadium. Its construction sent a strong message that baseball wasn’t going anywhere.”
In the spring of 2003, O’Connor was in his ninth season as an assistant under Paul Mainieri at Notre Dame. Mainieri, now the coach at LSU, had hired O’Connor at the tender age of 23 on the recommendation of former Chicago Cubs General Manager Jim Hendry, who coached O’Connor at Creighton.
Over those nine seasons, the Fighting Irish made plenty of noise: six NCAA Tournament bids and a trip to the College World Series in 2002. In 2001, O’Connor was tabbed the National Assistant Coach of the Year by Baseball America and the American Baseball Coaches Association.
“Brian was a rising star in college baseball when he was an assistant to Paul Mainieri at Notre Dame,” Grisham wrote to CollegeBaseballInsider.com. “Those of us involved in college baseball saw him coming – you couldn’t miss him. When it was time for a new coach at UVA, we made sure his name was at the top of the list.”
***
O’Connor, a native of Council Bluffs, Iowa, chose Creighton in nearby Omaha, Neb., as his college destination. Hendry, who became general manager of the Cubs in 2002, guided the Bluejays to the College World Series in 1991 when O’Connor was a sophomore pitcher. Two years later, O’Connor left Creighton with a marketing degree and a career record of 20-13 with seven saves and a 3.78 ERA.
He got a taste of Virginia when he was drafted by the Philadelphia Phillies in the 29th round and sent to Martinsville of the Class-A Appalachian League, where he went 4-2 with a 4.03 ERA. O’Connor returned to Creighton as pitching coach under Hendry in 1994.
Mainieri landed the Notre Dame job in 1995. Hendry, a close friend who coached with Manieri’s father Demie, recommended the new Fighting Irish coach take a look at his former pitcher. O’Connor was 23 at the time.
“I knew the kid was destined for greatness,” Mainieri told CollegeBaseballInsider.com in 2011. “It’s the best move I’ve ever made in coaching.”
During O’Connor’s time in South Bend, the Fighting Irish won big, averaging 44 wins a year. For his part, O’Connor was soaking up knowledge from Mainieri.
“I learned from the best, Paul Mainieri,” O’Connor said.
He stayed at Notre Dame for nine years for two big reasons: “I loved who I was working with, and I had a boss who allowed me to do my job.”
In short, he felt empowered.
***
Virginia found itself in the market for a head coach when Dennis Womack retired after the 2003 season, his 23rd leading the Cavaliers. Despite the fact the school considered downgrading the baseball program, Womack was able to recruit some serious talent to Charlottesville before he stepped aside.
The investment in a new stadium, Davenport Field, certainly helped.
Even though winning had proven tough for Virginia in the always-tough ACC, O’Connor was tempted by the Cavaliers’ opening.
“No. 1, it was an opportunity for my first head coaching job,” he said. “When you’re going after your first head coaching job, you can’t be too selective.”
When he peeled back each layer of the Virginia baseball onion, O’Connor liked what he saw: a school that was fully committed to the sport; the level of play in the ACC; the ability to recruit enough players from Virginia and nearby states; and an academic institution regarded as one of the top public schools in the nation.
“If any of those were not in play, I don’t think it would have been as attractive of a job,” O’Connor said.
Virginia Athletic Director Craig Littlepage, two years into his job, entrusted O’Connor, 32, to take charge of the Cavaliers.
***
O’Connor’s first order of business was to hire a staff.
“I was 32 years old, I didn’t have that many close connections,” he said. “When I was at Notre Dame, I just kind of did my job.”
Although he didn’t immediately know who he was looking for, he knew what he needed: “For this job to work, I needed to find two guys who were really, really hungry.”
Karl Kuhn was the pitching coach at Arkansas-Little Rock. One of his coaching friends at UALR was Porter Moser, who rose from assistant to head basketball coach of the Trojans. A handful of years before O’Connor got the head job at Virginia, Kuhn was headed to Notre Dame for a tournament. Moser told Kuhn that a buddy of his from Creighton was a baseball coach at Notre Dame, adding: “Do me a favor and tell him that P-Mo said hello.”
Kuhn, who goes by “Ks,” did just that, asking the Notre Dame coaches, “Which one of you guys is Oak?” referring to O’Connor’s nickname. The two became friends, occasionally seeing each other on the recruiting trail and at various events. Kuhn, looking for a new opportunity, became O’Connor’s first hire at Virginia.
McMullan and O’Connor had gotten to know each other a bit when “Mac” was on the staff at St. John’s. In 2002, McMullan was Keith LeClair’s top assistant at East Carolina and took over the Pirates as an interim coach when LeClair was forced to step aside after announcing he had ALS. ECU went 43-20-1 and clinched an NCAA Regional berth after winning the Conference USA tournament under McMullan, whose father played in the NFL with the New York Giants, Philadelphia Eagles and New York Titans.
McMullan found himself looking for a new opportunity when ECU Athletic Director Mike Hamrick chose former Pirates assistant Randy Mazey to guide the program.
McMullan said he talked with Mainieri and O’Connor about an opportunity at Notre Dame. He also got a call out of the blue from a coach named Kuhn – the first time they had ever met – about a volunteer job at UALR. Not being able to go from interim head coach to volunteer or being able to make ends meet at Notre Dame, McMullan took a job as manager of the Danville Braves in the Atlanta organization.
After a Sunday afternoon game in Danville in 2003, McMullan drove to Charlottesville to look around. O’Connor, now in the mix for the head job at Virginia, had asked McMullan if he’d be interested in coming back to college baseball.
“I think this is a sleeping giant,” McMullan thought at the time. Another thought was being a dad to a young daughter. “It was a situation, where I could be there for breakfast, be there for dinner with my family.”
O’Connor landed his second coach with an appetite for winning.
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Jeff Kamrath remembers one of his first exchanges with his new coach.
Kamrath, now the director of business development for GameChanger, was a weekend starter for the Cavaliers in 2003 before going down with an injury. He was late to a rehab assignment a few days after O’Connor was hired. The new coach asked Kamrath: “I’d like to know why you were late to your rehab assignment yesterday.”
“You realized, this guy’s for real,” Kamrath said.
Kamrath spent the bulk of O’Connor’s rookie 2004 season behind the radar gun while getting healthy. But he was getting an education from the new staff, particularly Kuhn.
“He was hands-on with us from Day 1,” Kamrath said. “It was his staff, and it was clear we were going to have an approach that we were all unified on.”
In addition to all the on-field work, Kamrath said the pitchers were quizzed on statistical data points, like the difference in working with a 1-1 count compared to a 1-2 count, or the odds of teams scoring a run with no walks and three hits in an inning.
“It was a complete culture mind-shift,” Kamrath said of the new staff. “There was a changing of the guard.”
***
Over the next 11 years, O’Connor, Kuhn and McMullan built a national power.
The Cavaliers reached Omaha, where O’Connor’s face was the inspiration for one of the celebrating players in the famous College World Series statue, in 2009, when O’Connor was tabbed CollegeBaseballInsider.com’s National Coach of the Year. That was followed by four 50-win seasons in five seasons and two more trips to the College World Series, the second of which saw Virginia fall to Vanderbilt in the third and deciding game of the championship series.
When asked if it surprised him that Virginia had gone from a struggling ACC program to national power under O’Connor, Grisham wrote: “No, I’m not surprised. UVA is an elite university, and a lot of students want to go there. It sort of recruits itself, much like UNC, Texas, Michigan – a few of the great public universities. What UVA needed was a coach who understood the college game, and especially knew how to recruit. And especially how to recruit pitchers. Baseball boils down to pitching at all levels. Brian pitched in college and is a great recruiter.”
What is a bit of a surprise is that O’Connor managed to keep McMullan and Kuhn at his side despite interest from other programs looking for head coaches.
“It’s worked personally for us because we’ve taken the egos out of it,” O’Connor said. “Everyone knows their responsibility. These guys have been empowered here.”
Taking a page from his mentor Mainieri, O’Connor said, “If you’re not going to let people do their job, then why have them on your staff?”
Kuhn said that sticking together for a dozen years is probably not something any of them thought might happen, calling it a great marriage of all three coaches.
“It’s been a great time together, one that I will always cherish,” he said.
But staying together all these years?
“I can only speak for myself,” Kuhn added. “First and foremost 1A and 1B is that you work for a guy who is a tremendous guy who lets you work and lets you do your job.
“We’ve helped the place grow, we love what we’re doing there. A great job is a great job, it doesn’t matter what title you have in front of you…I have a great job.”
McMullan contributed: “Brian is obviously a phenomenal guy to work for. He lets you do your job. There’s a lot of loyalty from him and autonomy in the same breath.”
Tyler Wilson, who went 27-7 with a 2.85 ERA for the Cavaliers before being drafted in 2011, called the Virginia coaches “a perfect combination.”
“He [O’Connor] trusts Ks and Mac,” Wilson said. “He gives them a little more freedom to get the most out of their players…Look at what they’ve built there. They’ve completely transformed that program.”
Wilson, who has gone 2-1 in six appearances for the Baltimore Orioles this season and whose brother Riley was a freshman on the Cavaliers in 2015, said his coaches not only gave opportunities on the field as players, but they also challenge players to be accountable for their own actions and be accountable as a man.
“Each one of them has done something to change my life,” he said after a July start for the Norfolk Tides, the Orioles’ Triple-A affiliate.
Kamrath, the pitcher who learned about accountability days after O’Connor took over, said that while there are other programs players choose because of the program, players go to Virginia to play for the coaches. He described them as coaches when you play there and confidants when you leave.
“When I was in the minors, I camped out in his basement for two months in the offseason,” Kamrath said of O’Connor. “How many coaches do that? I wasn’t the first, and I wasn’t the last.”
Both former players cited the culture O’Connor, Kuhn, McMullan and Matt Kirby, the Cavaliers’ volunteer for the past four years, have built. Kamrath believes the culture O’Connor has created can be credited as a factor why Kuhn and McMullan have stayed all these years, and that keeping the staff intact is the top reason they’ve had success.
O’Connor and the university also have made it easy to stay – and tough to leave – by rewarding the assistant coaches every step of the way. The Daily Progress in Charlottesville reported after the 2014 season that both assistants were signed through 2017 with salary and supplemental compensation packages totaling more than $150,000 per year, a figure higher than most Division I head coaches in Virginia and beyond. O’Connor, for his part, was given a seven-year extension after the 2014 season and earns more than $600,000 per season, according to TheDaily Progress.
“It won’t last forever, and that’s fine,” O’Connor said. “But certainly the continuity of our coaching staff has had a ton to do with the success we’ve had here.”
***
After falling to Vanderbilt in the third game of the 2014 College World Series Championship Series, Virginia again had high hopes to compete for a national title in 2015. In a CollegeBaseballInsider.com preseason survey of 172 head coaches, the Commodores and Cavaliers were the favorites to capture the national title.
But there were speed bumps even before the season began. Outfielder Joe McCarthy, one of the Cavaliers’ best returning bats, needed back surgery and wasn’t due back until the middle of the season.
Four games in, the Cavaliers lost another important bat in John LaPrise, who ended up missing the rest the season. Starting catcher Robbie Coman missed time, then ace pitcher Nathan Kirby went down after a Friday night start against Miami in April.
Ten games into the season and O’Connor was putting seldom-used junior reliever Kevin Doherty in the outfield and surrounding some of his veterans with young players thrown into the fire. The Cavaliers even brought on players from the school’s club baseball team to fill out the roster. To make matters even worse, a brutal winter forced Virginia to hit the road for several “home” series.
McMullan said that with all the setbacks, the team was just trying to survive one day at a time.
Two days after McCarthy made his return, Kirby left his start against the Hurricanes and would be sidelined until the College World Series. After dropping two of three at NC State the next weekend, Virginia was 10-14 in the ACC, 27-17 overall, in danger of missing the ACC Tournament and on the NCAA Tournament bubble.
“The year was just an unbelievable test and testament to our team’s toughness,” Kuhn said.
***
The Cavaliers closed the regular season by winning five of six in the ACC, including a critical sweep at North Carolina. Just when things were looking up, they won their ACC Tournament play-in game against Georgia Tech, but dropped three straight tourney games.
Virginia, however, had done enough to make the NCAA Tournament.
Similar to the way Oregon State’s defending national championship team slipped into the 2007 tourney and was shipped east – ironically to Charlottesville – the Cavaliers were sent to the Lake Elsinore Regional, where host UC Santa Barbara, playing about three hours from campus and USC, playing in its first tourney since 2005, were joined by San Diego State.
Kuhn knew the Cavaliers had their work cut out for them – playing three hours behind, traveling across the country and facing the likes of the Gauchos, Trojans and Aztecs. But he also had a pretty good feeling.
“For me, once we made it into the dance, it was anyone’s ball game,” he said. “We’re going to play some teams who don’t know who we are.”
Virginia, behind starters Connor Jones and Brandon Waddell and closer Josh Sborz, allowed two runs in the first two Regional games. The Cavaliers had to endure a slugfest, rallying from a 9-5 deficit in the sixth inning to force extras and eliminate the Trojans 14-10 in 11 innings. Doherty, by now a regular in the Virginia outfield as well as a trusted reliever, broke the 11th inning tie with an RBI double, and catcher Matt Thaiss had four RBI.
A funny thing happened while the Cavaliers were in California. Maryland, the team Virginia beat in the 2014 Super Regionals, shocked No. 1 National Seed UCLA to send both teams back to the East Coast – on the same plane no less – to square off in the Charlottesville Super Regional for the second year in a row.
Virginia, a team that scraped its way into the NCAA Tournament, now was hosting a Super Regional for the right to go to Omaha.
“Certainly, a lot of things had to go right,” O’Connor said. “When we won the Regional, I knew we were going back home. Now, it kind of turns. As a 3-seed, you don’t foresee yourself playing at home.”
The Cavaliers, playing with a looseness led by a head coach taking selfies at press conferences, swept the Terrapins. In the first game, they trailed 3-0 before Doherty contributed the big hit – a three-run double that fueled a five-run eighth inning to stun the visitors.
After the game, O’Connor appeared giddy, almost in awe that his team had gone from the NCAA bubble to a game away from the College World Series. “It’s a treat, it’s been a lot of fun,” he said, and “I’m just soaking it in, quite frankly, enjoying it as long as it lasts.”
One day later, O’Connor and the Cavaliers learned it would last a while longer. He and the coaching staff, for the first time, joined in the Virginia dogpile after eliminating Maryland.
***
In Omaha, Virginia again seemed an underdog against the likes of No. 4 Florida, No. 5 Miami and Arkansas.
After a gutty win over the Razorbacks, in which Kenny Towns broke a 3-3 tie in the eighth with a double and the Cavaliers scored all of their runs with two outs, Virginia had a date with vaunted Florida. Waddell and Sborz combined on a two-hitter, and Robbie Coman had a sacrifice fly in the sixth inning for the game’s lone run.
Things suddenly changed for the Virginia coaching staff. Rather than the one-game-at-a-time approach, the Cavaliers dreamed big.
“After we beat Florida, [we thought], we’ve got to figure this out: How do we put ourselves in the best position to win a national championship?” O’Connor recalled. He then added, “That was completely our focus.”
They tried to conserve pitching for a potential Championship Series by starting Kirby, making his first appearance in more than two months, but fell to Florida 10-5 to force a deciding game in their side of the bracket.
They then brought back Waddell, rather than Jones, to face the Gators. The lefty again gave the Gators trouble and battled through five innings before turning it over to Sborz, who settled in to toss four scoreless innings for a 5-4 win.
“We certainly took a risk pitching Waddell,” O’Connor said.
The bigger risk seemingly came after Vanderbilt knocked Jones around and took Game 1 of the Championship Series 5-1. Who would start Game 2, with the Cavaliers’ backs against the wall?
Kuhn said that he and O’Connor always talk about the pitching plan. And 99.9 percent of the time they agree. But this was the national championship, and while Kuhn was in agreement with O’Connor’s suggestion, he thought they should talk to all of the coaches. He wanted no second-guessing. The coaching staff, Kuhn said, met, deliberated and slept on the decision.
Adam Haseley, a freshman pitcher/outfielder who would be making his first start on the mound in more than a month, was the choice.
“Brian made the final decision, and it was a hell of a choice,” Kuhn said, before adding that all four coaches agreed.
Haseley tossed five scoreless innings before turning it over to Sborz, who closed with four scoreless innings to run his Omaha scoreless streak to 13 and overall streak to 27. Staying true to form, unsung heroes emerged, as freshman Ernie Clement, whose two-run walkoff single eliminated Maryland, had three hits and an RBI, and seldom-used senior Thomas Woodruff stole the spotlight with three hits and two RBI.
“It was an unbelievable outing by an unbelievable kid,” Kuhn said of Haseley.
He added that there were two decisions over the Cavaliers’ run the past handful of years that stood out as very big ones. The decision to start Haseley, and the decision to play the infield back and concede a run in the 2011 Super Regional against UC Irvine, when the Cavaliers rallied for two runs to stun the Eaters in the bottom of the ninth inning.
Waddell returned on three days’ rest to face the Commodores and turned in seven more sterling innings before turning it over to Kirby, the Friday-night ace who had been injured much of the year and struggled the year before against Vanderbilt in the Championship Series. Freshman Pavin Smith hit a two-run homer, and Towns made the defensive play of the series, a diving stab at third followed by a roll and throw at first.
Virginia had captured its first national title.
“I wouldn’t say it was a surprise to me,” O’Connor said. “It was more fulfilling because of all the different circumstances that we had endured throughout the year.
“It’s a great lesson in that you can play great baseball for four weeks and win a national championship.”