Quin Blanding wants to bring the same energy and passion he played football with at Virginia to the stands and social media while supporting his alma mater’s baseball team.
The former All-American safety just has one request: Don’t call him the leader of the bandwagon.
“I would call it a strong support system that we have,” Blanding said by phone on Tuesday, “because bandwagons I feel like, it’s just one of those things people hop on and hop off. I ain’t never hopping off UVa baseball. I’m always gonna be there.”
Blanding has been living in Columbia for almost a year now. He’s still training in hopes of an NFL career (“I’m just staying ready for when the next call comes or whatever opportunity presents itself,” he said) and recently partnered with his trainer to launch a recovery trailer that provides therapy and massages to athletes.
Two weeks ago, the UVa baseball team arrived in Blanding’s new home as one of the four teams competing in the NCAA’s Columbia Regional. Blanding was keeping tabs as the Cavaliers rallied from a loss in their regional opener to win three straight and force a deciding final game against Old Dominion.
When the two teams took the field last Tuesday morning, Blanding was in the crowd.
“It was amazing to see UVa playing in my face again,” he said. “Just to have the fans booing, cheering. I thrive off of that energy.”
That energy started getting the best of Blanding. He took to social media to start providing live updates from Founders Park and interact with other Virginia fans who couldn’t be at the ballpark. He got caught up in the drama as the two teams traded late runs before ending up in extra innings.
When Devin Ortiz, who began the game by throwing four scoreless innings as UVa’s starting pitcher, stepped to the plate in the bottom of the 10th inning, Blanding sensed that he could be on the verge of seeing something special.
“I’m going back and forth on Twitter and I’m like, ‘Okay, I’ve watched him pitch all day, and I’ve seen him just be this macho man doing this.’ I said, ‘He’s going to do something crazy. Watch this,’” Blanding said. “He hit a bomb and I said, ‘Oh my gosh.’”
It was the program’s first-ever walk-off home run in an NCAA Tournament game, giving the Hoos a 4-3 win and extending their stay in Columbia for another week. After telling UVa fans “I’m gonna bring the spark,” Blanding arrived back at the park to find the Wahoos trailing Dallas Baptist 2-0 midway through Saturday’s series opener. Not long after he got there, Jake Gelof and Alex Tappen hit back-to-back homers to jumpstart UVa’s five-run fifth.
The Wahoos wound up dropping that game but again rallied with back-to-back wins when facing elimination to clinch the program’s fifth all-time trip to the College World Series. Blanding says it wouldn’t be a Virginia postseason run without that kind of tension.
“All of our sports, we’ve all faced adversity,” he said. “The one thing I can say is, we know what it’s like and we know we’re going to overcome it. It motivates us even more when we’re down and we’ve got our backs against the wall.”
The Cavaliers open pool play at the College World Series against Tennessee at 2 p.m. Sunday. Blanding admits he’d like to be among the Virginia fans who will get to experience watching the Hoos on that national stage and has been looking into flights and hotels in Omaha.
He’s also been keeping up with his other Virginia sports, tracking the UVa swimmers competing at the US Olympic Trials and watching runner Michaela Meyer win a national championship in the 800 meters last weekend. But again, he’s not just jumping on the bandwagon.
“I support anybody that goes to UVa. So my bandwagon, that ain’t it,” he said. “I’m a big supporter of anyone that went to UVa. They’ve got my support, I’m with them and I’m going to ride with them and we’re gonna keep it going. I’m always gonna bring the energy regardless.”
South Carolina Power Surge
Virginia hitters made the most of their stay in South Carolina. Playing the maximum eight games through two rounds for the first time in program history, the Wahoos scored 45 runs and hit 13 home runs to get back to Omaha.
Those 45 runs are one more than what the 2014 team scored through the first two weekends of the NCAA Tournament for the most among the program’s five College World Series teams. The 13 homers are more than the pre-Omaha totals for those previous four teams combined.
Seven different players have gone deep for the Cavaliers already this postseason. In last weekend’s three-game super regional against DBU, 11 of UVa’s 14 runs came from long balls. Virginia slugged .479 and hit six homers against the Patriots; during the regular season, the Hoos didn’t hit more than four home runs in a three-game ACC series.
“It’s almost like a competition of, ‘I want to be the one to get us going,’” said UVa shortstop Nic Kent. “And once that one person does, it felt like the floodgates open up.”
Kent’s first postseason homer got UVa on the board in the fourth inning of Monday’s elimination game against DBU, cutting the Patriots’ lead to a single run. The rest of the scoring in the 5-2 victory came on Kyle Teel’s go-ahead grand slam in the seventh inning. It was also Teel’s first home run of the NCAA Tournament but his ninth of the season, the most for a UVa freshman since Steven Proscia hit 10 in 2009.
Those back-to-back homers by Tappen and Gelof in Saturday’s game gave both hitters three for the postseason. That already ties them with John Hicks for second on the UVa’s all-time NCAA Tournament home run list. Pavin Smith is the program’s all-time leader in postseason home runs, with four.
Shutting Down Potent Patriots
It was Dallas Baptist who entered last weekend’s Super Regional with the reputation for crushing baseballs. The Patriots emerged from the Fort Worth Regional ranked third in the country with 97 homers and fifth nationally in slugging percentage (.516).
That power was on display in Saturday’s opener against the Hoos. DBU hit three dingers in the 6-5 win, including game-tying and go-ahead solo shots that gave the Patriots an even 100 on the season. They added another to get out to Monday’s early 2-0 lead.
But between Andrew Benefield’s eventual game-winner with two outs in Saturday’s seventh inning and Jackson Glenn’s go-ahead two-run shot with one out in the third on Monday, the UVa pitching staff ripped off a streak of 12.2 scoreless innings. The Patriots began the super regional 10th in the country in scoring at 7.9 runs per game; the Wahoos held DBU to eight runs total for the weekend.
Griff McGarry limited DBU to just two hits while pitching into the eighth on Sunday, joining Josh Sborz in the deciding third game against Maryland in 2014 as UVa pitchers to throw seven shutout innings in a super regional start. On Monday, Matt Wyatt kept the Patriots off the board for the final 5.2 innings to earn his second win of the postseason.
Following his team’s elimination on Monday, DBU coach Dan Heefner acknowledged that “we really have to tip our cap” to both Wyatt and McGarry.
“Both of those guys, that’s elite stuff,” Heefner said. “And they pounded the strike zone with it too.”
McGarry combined with relievers Brandon Neeck and Kyle Whitten to throw Virginia’s ninth all-time shutout in an NCAA Tournament game, and the first since freshman outfielder Adam Haseley threw five scoreless in a spot start against Vanderbilt in UVa’s 3-0 win in Game 2 of the 2015 CWS Finals.
Wyatt also threw five scoreless in a start against South Carolina amid the run through the loser’s bracket of the Columbia Regional. Those 10.2 shutout innings are the most for a UVa pitcher without allowing an earned run heading into the College World Series. He and Neeck (6.2) are just the second and third Cavaliers to head to Omaha after throwing at least six scoreless.
Artie Lewicki took a 10.1-inning postseason scoreless streak into the 2014 College World Series. Sborz threw those seven scoreless against Maryland for that 2014 team and six scoreless out of the bullpen in the first two rounds of the 2015 tournament.
Lewicki threw 13 shutout innings in Omaha to end his UVa career on a 23.1-inning scoreless streak. A year later, Sborz finished with 19 scoreless innings of relief—going back to the regular season, his shutout streak extended to 27 straight—to earn Most Outstanding Player of the 2015 College World Series.
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!
