Baseball practices amid Virginia’s traditional late-season break for final exams often lack the intensity of the team’s typical workouts. This week, that has not been the case.
The Hoos took a few days off after last Tuesday’s late-inning collapse against VCU and then played a few scrimmages over the weekend. They were back to a normal practice schedule this week. Those have been spirited sessions, according to senior infielder Devin Ortiz.
“You can kind of tell the energy is still there,” he said, “even though we’re not playing anyone. That’s something that I’ve noticed and I’m really proud about. We’re actually in here. We’re chirping each other, we’re giving it to each other, and having fun doing it. So I’m looking forward to how we respond against Wake and the games moving forward.”
The Hoos return from their nine-day layoff for exams today with work yet to be done on the field over the season’s final two weekends. UVa has six games to play, all against ACC opponents: Three games at home against Wake Forest this weekend and then three at Boston College starting next Thursday.
Both teams enter the weekend’s series at Disharoon Park with stakes at play. Wake (17-23) is at the bottom of the ACC standings with a 7-19 conference record and hoping to keep its conference tournament hopes alive. Virginia (22-21) will take the field with a 13-17 record in league play and yet to clinch one of the four remaining spots in the ACC Tournament field. The Cavaliers are also still trying to climb back into NCAA regional contention after winning just four of their first 15 conference games.
It’s a postseason chase of their own doing.
“It’s as fun as it could get, because if we played a little better in the beginning of the season, the way that we have been, we wouldn’t have to be in this situation,” Ortiz admitted. “But I guess it is fun in a way, because it lights a little fire up our butts for the next two weekends. If we do this thing, we know we have a shot.”
“The guys know what’s at stake,” said head coach Brian O’Connor. “They know what we have to do to give ourselves the best chance, moving into the remainder of the ACC season and the postseason. They just want to play good baseball, and that’s what we’re focused on.”
The Hoos have put themselves back into the conversation for the program’s first NCAA regional bid since 2017 by winning four of their last five ACC series but they still sit squarely on the tournament bubble. Baseball America has Virginia as one of the last four teams to sneak into its most recent field of 64 projection. D1Baseball.com still has the Hoos as one of its first five teams out.
Aaron Fitt, co-editor and national writer for D1Baseball, says the Wahoos probably need to win at least four of their final six games to stay in that conversation.
“I’ve been saying all year that any ACC team that can go .500 in the conference against a 36-game schedule, a grueling 36-game schedule, you go .500 in the league, you deserve to be in,” Fitt said this week. “And if you can get close to that, 17-19, that gives you a chance.”
Finishing at .500 in the league has been the target since before the Cavaliers bottomed out at 4-12 by dropping the opener of their three-game series at Georgia Tech in early April. Prior to that weekend, O’Connor had laid the situation out to his team during a conversation he described as “candid” and “one-way.” To get to 18-18 in the league, the Wahoos needed to take two of three games in each of their seven remaining conference series. Their backs were against the wall. It’s time to come out punching.
“We had a good, honest conversation,” he recalled. “And throughout the time, there were individual conversations that were happening, with what guys needed to do in order to help the team. And it just started to click at the right time.”
Since that one-sided conversation in early April, the Hoos have gone 9-6 in ACC games.
Fitt was in Blacksburg two Sundays ago to watch the them clinch their most recent series win by beating Virginia Tech 6-1 in the rubber game, behind a strong seven-plus innings from sophomore starter Nate Savino.
“They’ve kind of figured it out after a tough start,” Fitt said. “They’ve proven they can beat good teams. I think their pitching is among the best in the league. Just the way the pieces fit together. I mean, I’ll take (Andrew) Abbott and (Mike) Vasil as my one-two punch over just about anybody in the conference, and the way Savino pitched on Sunday was really encouraging. And I like the bullpen.
“And it seems like the offense has kind of turned the corner,” he added. “It’s still maybe not a juggernaut offensive team like we thought it could be at the beginning of the year, but they’re starting to play better.”
O’Connor has credited his team for playing a more complementary style of baseball since early April. The pitching staff has worked to minimize walks, he said, and done a better job of holding runners and prevent stolen bases. The Cavaliers have played cleaner defensively. At the plate, hitters have seen an uptick in production, often sparked by tweaks to the lineup.
Ortiz has been slashing .356/.424/.606 since a day out of the starting lineup against Towson on March 17th and has been hitting in the cleanup spot for more than a month. Zack Gelof has a .330 batting average and .500 slugging percentage since moving into the leadoff spot at Georgia Tech. Since sliding into the back half of the lineup nine games ago, Nic Kent has hit .364 and driven in 11 runs; Max Cotier has hit .333 and scored 10 runs since replacing Kent in the No. 2 spot.
“It was really just little improvements, collectively as a group,” O’Connor said. “It was just being a little, little bit better, and I think that made the difference in allowing us to win series.”
In their updated tournament projections, both D1Baseball and Baseball America have nine ACC teams in. The top eight teams in the standings based on conference winning percentage—Notre Dame, Louisville, Georgia Tech, Pitt, Florida State, Virginia Tech, NC State, and Miami—are in both fields. UVa is the ninth ACC team according to Baseball America; D1Baseball has Clemson as the league’s ninth team.
Fitt thinks it’s unlikely the league would receive 10 regional bids. He believes the Hoos are currently ahead of North Carolina in the bubble pecking order but it would help UVa’s case if it could leap past either Clemson or NC State. The Tigers are at Florida State this weekend; NC State is at Pitt.
But with ACC teams playing nearly three-quarters of their 50-game schedule within the conference this spring and the Big Ten and some other leagues playing only a conference schedule, projecting how the NCAA selection committee will evaluate this year’s field is more challenging than during a normal season. Fitt believes the RPI, the crutch usually leaned on by the committee, will be less of a factor this year. He also sees the Cavaliers’ setbacks in non-conference play—splitting two games with Liberty and getting swept by VCU—more as missed opportunities to boost their NCAA stock than as blemishes on their resume.
“When you’re playing a 36-game league schedule instead of 30, and you’re only playing 50 games total, the RPI just is not very useful for comparing ACC teams against teams in other leagues that played normal conference schedules,” Fitt explained. “You need more cross-pollination between conferences for the RPI to really matter.”
Virginia’s other opportunity to build its case could come later this month in Charlotte. The selection committee factors tournament results into a team’s overall conference record. Two wins in pool play would turn a 17-win UVa team into a 19-win team, for instance.
“If you’re at 17-19, you’re on the bubble. You can’t afford to fall on your face in the conference tournament,” Fitt said, adding that if the Hoos went to Charlotte with just 16 ACC wins they’d probably need to make a run to the title game to have a case for a regional.
The Cavaliers are 2-4 in pool play since the ACC Tournament switched to its current 12-team format in 2017. UVa hasn’t advanced beyond pool play since winning the championship in 2011.
O’Connor admitted this week that he hadn’t looked at what his team still needed to do to clinch a spot in the 12-team conference tournament. He also asserted that conversations about the NCAA bubble were pointless if the Cavaliers didn’t finish strong down the stretch.
“I don’t want to continue to talk and talk about how many wins does it take and things like that,” he said. “They know that we’ve got to first and foremost play good baseball, and we’ve got to win series. And then take it from there, and we get what we earn.”
But if the Cavaliers do manage to get off that bubble and into an NCAA regional, Fitt believes this year’s team could be capable of a strong summer.
“I think that the pitching is so good that if they can just continue to come up with those timely hits, boy, they’re really dangerous,” he said. “You hate to make the comparison to 2015. It almost feels lazy. But there’s a reason they were ranked in the top 15 in the preseason. They have a lot of talent, and they have experience. If they can just find a way to get to postseason, then all bets are off.”
