There are more than 150 series on the college baseball schedule for this weekend. Only one features two of the top 10 teams in the latest D1Baseball Top 25 going head-to-head.

No. 3 Virginia’s visit to No. 8 Miami is the main event of this second weekend of April. It’s a matchup of the ACC’s top two teams and an opportunity for both to see how they measure up against the best opponent they’ve faced to this point in the season.

“They’re playing good ball, we’re playing good ball,” said UVa third baseman Jake Gelof. “So I think it’s gonna be a real fun series and just great baseball all around. Fun to watch.”

UVa goes into the weekend at 26-3 overall and 9-3 in the ACC, the program’s best start through four weekends of conference play since the 2014 national runner-up team began 10-2. Under head coach Brian O’Connor, only two Virginia teams have gotten off to better starts in ACC play: the 2014 team and the 2011 team, which swept three of its first four conference opponents en route to an 11-1 mark out of the gate.

Despite the Cavaliers’ strong start, they actually enter the weekend a game behind the Hurricanes in the Coastal Division standings. Since Clemson beat Miami 20-5 on March 20th to avoid being swept at home by the Canes—while the Wahoos were completing a three-game sweep of Boston College in Charlottesville—Gino DiMare’s ballclub has won six straight ACC games and 10 in a row overall, the longest winning streak of his four-year tenure as head coach.

Miami has swept No. 22 North Carolina at home and Duke in Durham the past two weekends. They extended that streak with a Virginia-esque 17-1 win at home over Florida International on Wednesday night. Those 17 runs were a season high for the Hurricanes, as were their 19 hits and four home runs.

“This will be a very, very good team,” O’Connor said of the Canes following UVa’s 7-2 win over Liberty on Wednesday night. “They’ve got outstanding pitching. They’ll have some of the best arms that we’ve faced, kind of like Wake from the high quality of arms. So it’ll be a great opportunity for us.”

The Hurricanes have a D1Baseball midseason All-American at the back end of the bullpen in right-hander Andrew Walters, who enters the weekend third in the country with nine saves and has yet to allow a run in 16 2/3 innings across 12 appearances. Their All-American closer last season, lefty Carson Palmquist, is Miami’s Friday starter this year. He’s 5-1 with a 3.22 ERA and third in the ACC with 56 strikeouts, including a dozen in six innings last Friday at Duke. Miami’s Saturday starter, freshman right-hander Karson Ligon, is 4-1 with an ACC-best 1.45 ERA.

Palmquist saved both wins for Miami when they took two of three from the Wahoos last season at Disharoon Park. Virginia hasn’t won a series against the Hurricanes since 2017. The 2018 and 2019 teams were both swept by Miami.

“Every year they’re a great ballclub,” said fifth-year senior Devin Ortiz, who was a freshman the last time UVa traveled to Coral Gables in 2018. “We just have to go down there and do what we do.”

UVa has out-slugged its opponents at a record-threatening pace all spring, including through the first month of conference play. The Hoos go into Friday night’s series opener scoring an NCAA-best 11 runs per game; in a dozen ACC games, that scoring average only dips slightly to 9.75 runs per game. On Thursday, Gelof was named the top player in the country at midseason by D1Baseball; Ortiz joined the third baseman on the outlet’s midseason All-America team as its utility player.

Both teams arrive at the midway point of ACC play with aspirations of ending the season in Omaha. Virginia is the No. 2 national seed and Miami the No. 6 in D1Baseball’s midseason projection of the 64-team NCAA tournament field; the latest Baseball America projection also has the Wahoos at No. 2 and Miami the No. 10 seed.

This is the first time since the revamped D1Baseball.com launched in 2015 that Virginia has played an ACC weekend series in which both teams were ranked in the top 10 nationally. It’s been eight years since UVa, then in the midst of a five-week midseason run atop Baseball America’s national rankings, went to Tallahassee to visit No. 4 Florida State. In May of 2013, No. 7 UVa ended the regular season with a wild weekend in Chapel Hill against No. 3 North Carolina. The Hoos took two out of three on the road in both series.

But this isn’t a completely foreign experience for veterans on the current No. 3 team in the country. All three teams the Wahoos faced at last year’s College World Series headed to Omaha ranked in the top 10 nationally.

“Going into this weekend it’s like the same thing,” said Ortiz. “It’s that same feeling of you’ve got to really buckle down because these guys are there to kick your behinds and we’re there to do the same. It’s a matter of just trusting each other and continuing to play how we play.”

JOIN CAVSCORNER TODAY!

If you are not already a member of CavsCorner, come join us and see what all of the buzz is about.

Click HERE to subscribe and get all of the latest news and join hundreds of other UVa fans in talking about Cavalier football, basketball, and recruiting. You won't be disappointed!