Brian O’Connor had a reminder for the reporters that had gathered in front of the Virginia dugout—though it seemed like he was reminding himself as much as anyone else nearby.

He had just watched his team rally to beat Georgetown 6-4 Wednesday night at Disharoon Park, erasing a pair of deficits in the process. Once 26-3 on the season, it was just the second win in the last nine games for the Wahoos. A team that two weeks looked like it was on its way to locking up a top-eight national seed in the NCAA tournament is now scrambling to stay in the conversation to host a regional.

“College baseball games are hard to win,” a seemingly relieved O’Connor said as he broke into the semicircle of reporters waiting to talk about the win. “That’s why when you win them you need to enjoy them, because they’re tough.”

For the first two months of the season, UVa had plenty to celebrate. The Wahoos were 26-3 overall and 9-3 in ACC play, the program’s best start in the league in eight years. D1Baseball.com had the Hoos at No. 3 in its national rankings and as the No. 2 overall seed in its midseason NCAA tournament field of 64 projection.

Virginia was playing at an elite level in every facet of the game. The offense was leading the country in scoring (11.0 runs per game), batting average (.336) and on-base percentage (.443), and fifth nationally in slugging percentage (.559). The pitching staff’s 2.84 ERA was fourth in the country. Defensively, the Hoos were ninth nationally with a .982 fielding percentage.

But the numbers from the last nine games, including Wednesday’s win, tell a different story. The Wahoos have averaged just 5.4 runs per game over this 2-7 stretch. They’re hitting a collective .269, with a .385 on-base percentage and .364 slugging percentage. After hitting 47 home runs in those first 29 games, UVa has hit three since the start of the Miami series two weeks ago. The Hoos didn’t have an extra-base hits Wednesday against the Hoyas.

The team ERA over those last nine games has ballooned to 5.31. After issuing just 3.60 walks per nine innings to begin the season, UVa pitchers are giving up 6.72 walks-per-nine over the past nine games. They’ve also surrendered 13 homers the past two weeks; opponents hit 20 in the season’s first 29 games. Defensively, the Hoos committed 19 errors in those first 29 games, 12 in the last nine.

For those first two months, it felt like every play went Virginia’s way, said big right-hander Paul Kosanovich. That hasn’t been the case the past two weeks.

“The ball falling, or being able to make that pitch, someone fouls it off, or we don’t quite get a call that from the side looks like it’s ours and then the next pitch something happens,” Kosanovich said. “It’s just tough to get that momentum back on our side.”

During that torrid start to the season, the team was playing with a different edge, said outfielder Chris Newell. And that mindset was contagious.

“Somebody doesn’t execute or get that hit, the next guy is just as capable to do that,” Newell explained. “And I think earlier in the season we had that going for us, and now it’s kind of catching up to us a little bit. We kind of got away from it.”

“You lose a couple ballgames and energy changes a little bit, and people feel it,” he added. “But it’s about how you respond. It’s important for us to know that we can’t get away from it. We have to keep going no matter what the result is.”

O’Connor criticized his team for what he called a “soft approach” following last Tuesday’s 9-2 loss at home to Old Dominion. At that point, the Hoos had lost four straight; that losing streak stretched to five, the longest of O’Connor’s 19-year tenure, when UVa dropped the opener of last weekend’s three-game series at Pitt.

Virginia snapped that skid emphatically by beating Pitt 18-0 last Saturday, but then dropped the finale against the Panthers followed by a walk-off loss at VCU in 10 innings Tuesday night. Following Wednesday’s win, O’Connor credited his players for “going about their business the right way” despite the setbacks.

“You just continue to preach to them that if your attitude is right and our approach is right, in this game,” the head baseball coach added, “we have have enough talent, in this game it’ll come back around to you.”

UVa was a game behind first-place Miami in the ACC standings prior to getting swept by the Hurricanes two weekends ago. They head into this weekend’s three-game series at Disharoon Park against North Carolina part of a three-way tie with Wake Forest and Florida State for fifth place in the conference at 10-8. The Hoos will spend the next two weekends at home, against a UNC team that's dropped its last four conference series followed by a visit from Virginia Tech.

Even after dropping the past two weekend series, “we’re in a decent spot,” said Kosanovich, pointing to last season’s 6-12 record after six ACC weekends.

“The spot that we’re in this year compared to last year is incredible,” Kosanovich said. “I’ll take this all day. I’ll take 10-8 all day.”

The veteran reliever also contended that there’s some long-term benefit to the midseason adversity. Almost half of the players on UVa’s roster are new to the program this year, and won’t part of last year’s second-half surge that pushed the team into the postseason and ultimately to the College World Series.

“Obviously it’s super fun to win, super fun to win how we’ve been winning,” Kosanovich said. “But it’s not 100 percent realistic all the time, and especially when we go into playoffs and we’re playing really good teams. That’s not gonna be the case.”

That said, the results of the past two weekends have generated some urgency within the UVa clubhouse. In its most recent tournament field projection released this week, D1Baseball had UVa no longer as the No. 2 overall seed but as a No. 2 regional seed. That would mean no postseason baseball in Charlottesville for the sixth straight summer.

“We really want to pack this place for a regional,” Newell acknowledged, “and it’s gonna take all of us and the remaining four weekends to go out with that edge and play hard and play focused to be able to do that.”

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