Given the way things unfolded at Disharoon Park back in March, it should be no surprise that Virginia coach Brian O’Connor has a lot of respect for the way Notre Dame plowed through the entire ACC this spring.
“Notre Dame probably had the most dominant ACC season, conference season ever,” O’Connor said on Sunday, shortly after the schedule was released for this year’s ACC Tournament. “I can tell you since the 18 years I’ve been in this league.”
Picked to finish last in the Atlantic Division before the season, the Fighting Irish instead went 29-10 overall and 25-10 in conference play. With that run through the league, Notre Dame matched the 2015 Louisville team that went 25-5 in the conference for the most ACC wins in a single season. The Irish are the top seed at this week’s ACC Tournament in Charlotte and now stand between O’Connor’s Cavaliers and a spot in Saturday’s semifinals.
The two teams will meet at 11 a.m. tomorrow at Truist Field to determine who will advance from Pool A. Neither school has reached the semifinals since the league went to the current tournament format in 2017. Both are 1-0 this week in Charlotte after picking up wins against Virginia Tech. Virginia beat the Hokies 3-2 on Tuesday; the Irish shut out Tech 8-0 the following day.
The Hoos left Charlottesville knowing that to advance they’d have to go through a Notre Dame team that swept them two months ago. After Tuesday’s win against Tech, the players admitted they were looking forward to getting another crack at the ACC’s regular season champion.
“We can’t wait. Really excited,” said freshman Kyle Teel, whose long two-run homer in the third inning proved the difference in UVa win against Tech. “When the schedule came out we were pumped. We’re really excited to play them on Friday.”
“They’re the best team in the ACC for a reason,” said UVa right-hander Zach Messinger, who earned the win against the Hokies after taking a shutout into the sixth. “They hit the ball really well, their pitching has been consistent all year, and they play good defense. We’re going to have to be on top of everything come Friday morning, but we’re ready and I think today showed that.”
Notre Dame’s time on Grounds was the nadir of Virginia’s slow start to conference play. The Irish hit .365 with seven home runs as a team that weekend. They put up 30 total runs and along the way became the first team in five years to score 10-plus against the Hoos in back-to-back games. That’s the highest run total for a UVa opponent in a three-game ACC series this year; the Cavaliers’ team ERA for the weekend was 8.33.
“They clobbered us,” O’Connor recalled. “They beat us in every facet of the game the entire weekend, in our ballpark.”
“Frankly, that was our wake-up call, was Notre Dame,” admitted Messinger, who was charged with five runs in 1.2 innings in two relief appearances against the Irish. “Us as an entire staff, as a team. As much as it was brutal getting swept at home that weekend, we needed it.”
The Wahoos were just 2-7 in ACC play (7-8 overall) after that series against the Irish. They remained at home for the next two conference weekends, but picked up just one win apiece against Pitt and Miami. Those two series losses dropped Virginia to just 4-11 in the league heading into April.
The season turned with back-to-back wins at Georgia Tech to open the new month, which began UVa’s streak of six series wins in their final seven ACC weekends, a surge that pushed the Cavaliers back to .500 in the ACC at 18-18 to end the regular season. Virginia entered the ACC Tournament as the No. 8 seed, which put the Hoos in the same pool as the top-seeded Irish.
“We were not playing our best baseball against Notre Dame,” Messinger said. “We were going through a rough patch right there, and frankly I think we’re a completely different team than what we were against Notre Dame. We’re pitching really well. Our offense has come around to be a really scary offense, one through nine.”
“I think we’re doing a great job fighting every day,” said Teel, who homered twice in that March series against Notre Dame. “We’re really competing. Since the beginning we just kept working, and now it’s really starting to show how great this team can be.”
While the Wahoos were rallying down the stretch, the Irish kept rolling through the rest of the league. Notre Dame did not lose back-to-back games all season and only lost one ACC series all spring, dropping two of three against Florida State earlier this month in South Bend. After beating the Hokies on Wednesday, the Irish will take a five-game winning streak into Friday’s meeting with the Wahoos. They’ve spent the past seven weeks ranked in D1Baseball’s national top 10, entering the ACC Tournament at No. 7.
Tomorrow’s game will feature a matchup of two first-team All-ACC starters on the mound. Notre Dame will go with right-hander John Michael Bertrand, a graduate transfer from Furman who has a 7-1 record and 2.77 ERA in his first season in South Bend. One of those seven wins came in the second game of Notre Dame’s sweep in Charlottesville, when Bertrand gave up three runs on five hits in seven innings.
UVa will counter with senior lefty Andrew Abbott (7-5, 2.83 ERA), who as of Thursday was tied for third in the country with 127 strikeouts in 82.2 innings pitched. Abbott’s shortest start of the season came in the series opener against Notre Dame in March, when he surrendered six runs on nine hits in 4.1 innings in a 10-5 loss.
The Wahoos have won seven of Abbott’s last eight starts. He has a 6-1 record and 2.70 ERA in that eight-game stretch and a 4-0 record and 0.96 ERA in his last four starts. He hasn’t given up an earned run in more than a month. Since April 2nd, the Hoos have averaged 9.6 runs when Abbott is on the bump.
With their ace on the hill, the Cavaliers won’t be lacking confidence when they take the field against the Irish.
“It’s tough to beat a team four times,” said UVa third baseman Zack Gelof. “They know that we’re a better team (than in March), and we know we’re a better team. We’re not scared of a team that swept us at home, and we want to get some revenge.”
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