The last time the Virginia baseball team returned home from opening weekend with a winning record, Nic Kent was still playing basketball across town at St. Anne’s-Belfield.

With a team-high five hits at the plate and some key plays at shortstop, the junior infielder helped the Hoos change that this past weekend. By taking two out of three at Disharoon Park from UConn—the preseason pick to win the Big East this season—UVa emerged from its opening weekend with a winning record for the first time since 2018.

“That was the first time for me winning the first series,” Kent said after a two-hit performance in Sunday’s series-clinching 4-2 win. “UConn was a really good team. Oak was saying how that’s an ACC weekend right there. That’s preparing us for the next 12 weeks.”

The original plan for the 2021 schedule was supposed to include the Cavaliers opening the season as part of a four-team tournament in Texas that also included UConn. When the COVID-19 pandemic forced changes, UVa and the Huskies agreed to open the season going head-to-head for three games.

The Wahoos open ACC play with three games at North Carolina this weekend, starting Thursday. It’ll mark the first time UVa has ever played a conference series in the month of February. Brian O’Connor wanted a test for his team to open the season, which is why it was important to keep the Huskies on the schedule.

UConn provided the challenge O’Connor was seeking. The two teams played one-run games on both Friday and Saturday and the Huskies had the tying run at the plate to end Sunday’s finale. O’Connor and his players compared the level of intensity throughout the weekend to a conference series.

“We proved this weekend that we can win a couple of close ballgames,” O’Connor said in Sunday’s postgame session.

This team still has more to prove, he admitted. All nine regulars and every key pitcher is back from last year’s team, which was 14-4 when the pandemic halted the season. But no one on the current roster has played in an NCAA Regional. UVa’s last postseason appearance came in 2017.

This year’s team entered the weekend ranked No. 16 in the country in the D1Baseball and No. 5 nationally by Baseball America. It was the first time either outlet had included the Cavaliers in their preseason rankings since 2018, and the highest UVa preseason ranking on either site since 2016.

Those expectations got bigger on Monday, when Baseball America bumped the Wahoos up three more spots to No. 2 in the country. It’s the highest in-season ranking for UVa by Baseball America since the ‘Hoos spent five straight weeks in April and early May 2014 on top of the publications’s poll. The new D1Baseball Top 25 will be released on Tuesday.

“I know there’s a lot on this team,” O’Connor said Sunday. “People talk about the talent and the skill level; this team still needs to learn how to win, obviously. There’s not players on this team that have won big-time in this uniform. So that’s still a learning work-in-progress, and I think this weekend was a big weekend for that.”

Kent got the Wahoos started in Sunday’s finale, leading off the bottom of the first with a single, then stealing second and scoring on Marc Lebreux’s base hit to right. It ignited a two-run frame, giving them a lead they would not relinquish.

UVa entered Sunday’s game hitting just .185 as a team after two games. The Hoos put up 11 hits on Sunday with eight of the nine starters having at least one. It was enough to bump that team batting average up to .232 for the weekend.

That’s the same lineup that was hitting .309 through last season’s 18 games, which ranked fourth in the ACC and 18th in the country. That group was also largely responsible for the nine runs per game the Hoos put up last season, which led the ACC and ranked fourth nationally. And the team’s slugging percentage for the weekend was at .253— the Wahoos finished the weekend with just two extra-base hits—after slugging .514 as a team last year.

Those down numbers didn’t concern the Cavaliers head coach on Sunday.

“Typically that’s the thing that struggles the most early in the season, is offense,” O’Connor said. “Especially when you face high-level arms.”

He was pleased with the competitive at-bats he saw from his team on Sunday. Kent called it a “complete game” offensively.

“With how complete our lineup is, if one guy isn’t having a day, there’s always the guy behind him to pick him up,” the shortstop said. “That was kind of the case the first two games, and then today I think pretty much everybody got a hit on our team.”

O’Connor did say the Cavaliers would need more production from the bottom of the lineup. The 7-8-9 hitters went a combined 4-for-31 for the weekend. Sophomores Chris Newell and Max Cotier finished the weekend with just one hit apiece, a double by Newell and a single by Cotier back-to-back in the sixth inning on Sunday.

“And they will,” O’Connor said. “Chris Newell is an example of somebody that started slow last year, and then he caught fire. So it’s a work in progress.”

Few if any everyday roles were up for grabs heading into the season, since UVa returned so many veterans. But a team can never have too many reliable arms out of the bullpen and O’Connor said some of those roles are still open after the first weekend.

“It’ll take time to figure out the guys out of the bullpen,” he admitted Sunday, “who you can really, really count on, and who’s going to be consistent.”

Sixth-year senior Stephen Schoch is entrenched in the closer role. The Stopper of the Year candidate saved both of the wins this weekend, putting him atop the ACC in that statistic. Blake Bales struck out three in the 1.1 scoreless innings he worked over Saturday and Sunday, while the only blemish on Paul Kosanovich’s record in his two appearances was Reggie Crawford’s solo homer that amounted to UConn’s only run on Friday.

Kyle Whitten also pitched in two games but to mixed results. He retired the Huskies in order in the eighth inning of Friday’s win. Whitten was back out for the eighth on Saturday, with the game tied 7-7, but gave up three hits and two walks in 2/3 of an inning before giving way to Bales. He was charged with two runs, and took the loss in the Huskies’ 10-9 win.

Whitten was one of seven relievers to take the mound on Saturday, and as a group they struggled to throw consistent strikes. They combined to give up eight runs on eight hits, walk eight batters, and hit two more.

“We’re going to need some guys out of that bullpen to step up,” O’Connor said after Saturday’s loss. “Throughout the first part of the season here, all the games count, but we need to solidify and find out which of those guys can really, really do the job for us.”

Despite extending his streak of consecutive starts to 77 straight games, junior infielder Zack Gelof did find himself at a new position on Saturday.

Gelof had been the Cavaliers’ starting third baseman since the first game of his freshman season in 2019. On Saturday, he moved across the diamond to make his first college start at first. Devin Ortiz, UVa’s regular first baseman since last season, moved over to third.

“It was weird,” Gelof admitted after Saturday’s game. “I mean, you don’t really have to worry about throwing. I feel like when the ball’s hit to you, ‘All right, just knock it down.’”

Gelof started working out at first in the fall and into this preseason. Saturday’s game was the first career start at third for Ortiz, but he had previously started games in all three outfield positions, and had practiced all over the infield throughout his time at UVa.

O’Connor said the goal was to give the two veterans different looks early in the season. Gelof and Ortiz were both back at their normal positions for Sunday’s finale.

“My plan was, early on here, just to kind of flip-flop them here a little bit,” O’Connor explained.

Before the season opened, O’Connor admitted that with so many veterans back the first-years could have trouble getting playing time early in the year.

“They’ve got to keep working, and be prepared for when their opportunity comes,” he said last week. “They’ve got to have the right attitude and the right mindset, to just continue to work and develop.”

That proved to be the case this past weekend. Only three freshmen made their college debuts for the Hoos, all in brief appearances off the bench in Saturday’s loss.

Lefties Luke Schauer and Jake Berry were among the pitchers who struggled out of the bullpen in the loss. Schauer entered the game under less-than-ideal circumstances for a college debut, with the bases loaded and one out in the sixth inning. He failed to record an out, giving up an RBI single and a run-scoring walk, then falling behind Pat Winkel 2-0 before giving way to Matt Wyatt mid-at-bat. Only five of Schauer’s 12 pitches were for strikes.

Berry was on the hill to start the 9th and he only lasted 10 pitches, issuing a leadoff walk then hitting a batter before being replaced by Billy Price. Berry was charged with one earned run in his debut, and also failed to record an out.

Outfielder Jake Gelof struck out with two on as a pinch-hitter in the ninth inning.

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