CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. – Omaha, Neb., lies 1,186 miles from Disharoon Park, where the Virginia baseball team plays its home games.
That distance was commemorated in an ESPN special, “1186 to Omaha,” a documentary about UVa’s 2015 NCAA championship, the first for an ACC team in 60 years.
NCAA Baseball Super Regional
With Saturday’s 10-4 conquest of Kansas State in the super regional before a fourth straight sellout crowd of 5,919, host UVa, 46-15 and the No. 12 national seed, punched its ticket to Omaha for the third time in the past four years, sweeping the best-of-three series with two consecutive wins.
Kansas State, 35-26, hung around for most of the afternoon and trailed by only a run at 5-4 after eight innings.
But as they did in the regional final against Mississippi State a week ago, the Cavaliers staged a big ninth inning to put it out of reach, getting a two-run triple from Jacob Ference and a pinch-hit, three-run double by Luke Hanson.
Virginia coach Brian O’Connor said he was proud of his team’s accomplishments.
“They can handle the moment and what the game brings them,” he said. “There is pressure when you play at home when you are a No. 1 seed because everybody believes that you should win, but we respect and understand how hard it is to win this time of year.”
Maybe it is, but the Cavaliers, 46-15, are doing it with regularity. They will make their seventh trip to the CWS in the past 15 seasons, and they have advanced on all but two times that they reached a super regional.
Then again, O’Connor might be right about the difficulty because this was only the second time UVa won its super regional in two straight games.
UVa shortstop Griff O’Ferrall said it was important to appreciate the team’s effort to return to Omaha this year.
“You’re right, every journey is a little different,” he said in answer to a question. “This season had a lot more twists and turns, I would say, than our trip last year (to Omaha), a lot more comeback wins, a lot more weird games.”
Junior right-hander Jay Woolfolk, the former Virginia quarterback candidate, earned the pitching plaudits, working a solid 6 1/3 innings before turning the game over to relievers Angelo Tonas and Chase Hungate. Both are in their second season with the Cavaliers after transferring from area rivals, Tonas from Georgetown and Hungate from VCU. Hungate earned his second save by recording the final six outs.
“Jay Woolfolk, I’m sure he would tell you, he didn’t have his best stuff today,” O’Connor said. “But he grinded it out and kept his team in the ballgame and did everything he could possibly do.”
Woolfolk, 4-1, who also got the clinching win last Sunday in the regional, struck out seven and walked two, allowing six hits and three runs. He threw 102 pitches, one less than his total last weekend.
Although he began the season as the Sunday starter, Woolfolk made his last regular-season start on March 17 and was dropped from the rotation until last weekend.
“You know, it definitely means a little more, knowing that like, again, I haven’t had the greatest start of the year,” said Woolfolk, who gave up football last summer to concentrate on baseball. “But, you know, talking to Coach O, and he’s always told me it’s not how you start a year, it’s how you finish it.”
The hitting laurels came up and down the lineup, befitting an offensive juggernaut that ranks in the top 10 nationally in seven categories and boasts eight players hitting .332 or better, combining for a team batting average of .336 that ranks second in the nation.
Three more regulars own batting averages of at least .294, including left fielder Harrison Didawick, the guy who shares the all-time season home run record at 23.
All 10 players utilized in the batting lineup Saturday by O’Connor contributed at least one hit apiece in the 13-hit attack. Six players drove in runs.
“I feel like the University of Virginia baseball infomercial here the last few days, to be honest with you,” Kansas State coach Pete Hughes, the former Virginia Tech head coach, said when he was asked – again — about the depth in the UVa lineup.
“If I didn’t like Brian O’Connor so much and respect him so much, I probably wouldn’t answer this question, but they’re the gold standard of college baseball. They are Omaha driven and fueled every single year.”
He added, “It’s good to see people with integrity winning at a high level because that’s not always the case these days in college athletics, but specifically my sport.”
And talk about clutch. All 10 runs were scored with two outs as UVa went 7-for-15 with runners in scoring position and 8-for-20 with two outs. But that was nothing new. The Cavaliers scored five of their seven runs with two outs in Friday night’s 7-4 Game 1 win over Kansas State.
“I’ll tell you what, we have scored a ton of runs with two outs this year,” O’Connor said. “Two outs, nobody on, and that’s what I spoke about earlier, the relentlessness of this team.
“I think that’s the absolute best word to describe this team. They just don’t stop, and they believe in each other, and they believe that they can do anything, and what a great quality to have.
“Offensively, when you do what we do with two outs, that speaks to the fiber of who they are as men, and they’re just not going to give anything away.”
Casey Saucke, Henry Ford and Eric Becker had two hits apiece. Saucke started things with a first-inning solo homer, his 14th, and Didawick would add an RBI single in the inning.
Although Kansas State struck for single runs in the first and second to draw even, UVa went in front for good in the fifth on Ford’s two-run, bases-loaded single.
K-State got a run back in the bottom of the fifth on Brendan Jones’ solo homer to right, his ninth. And when Kyan Lodice followed with a two-out triple to center, it brought up Kaelen Culpepper, the Wildcats’ top hitter.
But center fielder Bobby Whalen saved a run when he ran down Culpepper’s drive deep to left center and held on after colliding with the wall.
UVa picked up an insurance run in the eighth on Becker’s second double of the day, a liner to right center. It proved to be a big run when Lodice led off the K-State half of the eighth with a homer off Tonas, who had stranded a runner at second by notching the final two outs of the seventh in relief of Woolfolk.
It was the only run allowed by UVa relievers in the regional or super regional, a span of 12 innings that included 10 strikeouts, three walks and six hits.
Whalen made a bid to run down Lodice’s homer but got to the center field wall too late and plunged over it in a vain attempt to haul down the drive.
O’Connor was asked if he was worried that maybe Whalen wasn’t coming back after disappearing over the fence.
“I was hoping Bobby would come back,” O’Connor said.
After all, there are more games to play next weekend.
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