It will take a special weekend for Virginia to rebound from Friday’s loss to South Carolina and advance beyond the first weekend of this year’s NCAA Tournament.
If they do it, it’ll be in part because the Wahoos got started with a historic day at the plate Saturday against Jacksonville.
The Cavaliers banged out 21 hits as a team, the most in a single NCAA Tournament game in postseason history. All nine starters had at least one hit; six had multi-hit days. There were two no-doubt-about-it homers and one 12-pitch walk that, from UVa’s perspective, turned the tide.
The Hoos needed that kind of production to survive the war of attrition against the Dolphins. They extended their season for at least one more day with the 13-8 victory that pits them against the loser of Saturday’s second game in Columbia between Old Dominion and South Carolina, the top two seeds in the regional, at noon tomorrow.
“This is what you have to do when you fall into the losers’ bracket,” UVa coach Brian O’Connor said afterward. “Sometimes you gotta outslug somebody, and we certainly did that today.”
Those 13 runs were the most for the Wahoos in a regional since they beat William & Mary 17-4 in the opener of the 2016 Charlottesville Regional. UVa scored in every inning but the seventh with the biggest chunk of the damage done in the sixth, when the Wahoos sent 10 players to the plate and scored five runs on six hits.
That frame began with UVa trailing 7-6. Kyle Teel got the Cavaliers going with a single to right for his fourth hit of the day. Designated hitter Devin Ortiz then battled back from down 0-2 to foul off six pitches and ultimately draw a walk.
“I was so excited that he won that at-bat,” Teel said. “He battled that whole time. It fired me up, for sure. I think that was awesome. I think that fired the whole team up.”
That 12-pitch walk ignited the Cavaliers. Nic Kent followed by flaring a fly ball to shallow left field that scored Teel and, after a Jacksonville error on the play, Ortiz with the go-ahead run. Two batters later, Jake Gelof crushed a two-run homer that cleared the Jacksonville bullpen in left-center. Max Cotier capped the inning with his third RBI single of the game, putting the Wahoos in front 11-7.
That long ball helped the younger Gelof carve his own spot in the UVa postseason record book on Saturday: His four runs scored matched John Hicks’ day against VCU in 2010 for the most in an NCAA Tournament game in program history and he also tied another UVa single-game NCAA Tournament record by smoking a pair of doubles before clubbing his homer.
His older brother Zack Gelof followed Friday’s three-hit day against South Carolina with a 4-for-5 performance at the plate. Through two games this weekend in Columbia, the brothers are hitting a combined .647 (11-for-17) with three long balls, five RBI and nine runs scored.
“I think it just is kind of a snowball effect,” Jake Gelof said after Saturday’s win. “We had good approaches yesterday. We were just on the short end of the stick, and I think today we stayed with our approach and had great at-bats. … We were all finding barrels and it was falling and we had a great day.”
When Chris Newell led off the eighth inning by launching a bomb to right field that cleared the perimeter fence that surrounds the Founders Park facility, it meant all nine UVa starters had hits. Six different players drove in runs; eight of the nine scored at least once. After combining to go hitless in 13 at-bats in Friday’s 4-3 loss to the Gamecocks, the 2-through-5 hitters in the lineup finished 10-for-21 with four runs and eight RBI against the Dolphins.
“Typically in these regionals, as you progress on through the losers’ bracket, you need to put up runs. You have to,” O’Connor explained. “There will be guys that will step up on the mound and do the job as well, but the regionals typically become pretty offensive, especially at a place like this.
“It’s hot. The ball is traveling,” he continued. “And so balls can get out of here pretty good that you need to match people.”
O’Connor did acknowledge in his opening remarks on Saturday that “I have no idea who we’re pitching tomorrow.” The Hoos went with Mike Vasil on Saturday but he gave up five runs on seven hits in two innings and was pulled after giving up five straight hits to open the third. Vasil was relieved by Kyle Whitten, who retired the first six batters he faced but departed after putting two in scoring position with one out in the fifth.
The Cavaliers had hoped to save sophomore Nate Savino to start on Sunday but O’Connor went to the lefty to get out of that fifth-inning jam. After allowing those two runners to score on a wild pitch and a sacrifice fly, Savino (3-3) settled in. He pitched the final 4.2 innings for Virginia, earning the win after giving up one run on one hit.
“Obviously he’s been one of our starters all year,” O’Connor said of Savino. “If you don’t win today, you don’t have a chance tomorrow.”
Neither Griff McGarry (0-5, 7.46) nor Matt Wyatt (2-1, 5.40) has pitched for Virginia in Columbia. Seven of McGarry’s eight starts during the regular season came on weekends, though he failed to record an out at VCU on April 20th in his last start. All but one of Wyatt’s 15 appearances have come out of the bullpen. In his lone start, at Liberty on March 24, he failed to get out of the first inning.
Zach Messinger has made four starts for the Hoos, including a career-best 5.1 innings in a win against Virginia Tech at last week’s ACC Tournament. But hr just threw 39 pitches in 2.1 shutout innings out of the bullpen against USC on Friday.
O’Connor said the staff will wait to see who they’ll be matched up with in Sunday’s elimination game before making a decision. If the Wahoos win that first game on Sunday, they’ll have to come back that evening to play Saturday night’s winner.
“You can’t worry about Monday until you get to Monday,” O’Connor said. “You can’t worry about the second game tomorrow until you get to that point, and we needed to win today. We were going to do everything it took to win today, and then we’ll worry about who needs to go out there on the mound for us, later tonight for tomorrow at noon.”
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