Home Team of Destiny: How did UVA baseball get to CWS Championship Series?
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Team of Destiny: How did UVA baseball get to CWS Championship Series?

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cws2015uvaOn May 14, closing in on 10 p.m. Chapel Hill time, the UVA baseball season was on the verge of being over. The Cavs trailed North Carolina 1-0 going into the ninth inning. Robbie Coman tied the game with an RBI single in the ninth, and a Pavin Smith fielders choice scored the go-ahead run in the 10th to give Virginia the 2-1 win that lifted the ‘Hoos to 13-15 in the ACC on the season.

A 6-2 win a night later clinched a spot in the ACC Tournament for UVA, and the 8-2 win that finished out the three-game weekend sweep likely sealed the at-large bid into the NCAA Tournament.

It had to be that, because Virginia didn’t exactly do much to add to its resume in Durham, winning a play-in game against Georgia Tech to make it to the main draw, but then going 0-3 there, including a demoralizing 9-2 loss in the finale to N.C. State that served as the send-off to a #3 seed in the Big Dance.

Nothing was easy for this Virginia team, which was ranked #1 in some of the preseason polls, started 12-1, but had to deal with so many key players going down to injury (Nathan Kirby, Joe McCarthy and John La Prise among them) that it didn’t seem worth it to try to count them anymore.

“These guys sitting to my right and their teammates have just persevered through a lot of difficult things that a team goes through this year. I think in the months of March and April we were something like, we were a .500 ballclub, maybe a game below .500, I think somebody told me 18-19 in those two months combined. So to see how this team kind of hung in there and stayed with each other, it’s about these guys. They figured it out. They didn’t quit through everything that they were dealing with,” Virginia coach Brian O’Connor said Sunday, on the biggest stage of them all in college baseball, the dais of the press conference in Omaha on the eve of the College World Series Championship Series.

It seems ridiculous to even think that this team was able to think Omaha was a possibility. This is a team that was 0-7 against Virginia Tech, ODU, VMI and Georgetown in 2015, was swept at home by ACC regular-season champ Louisville by a combined score of 23-5 over an ugly, ugly weekend in early April, and seemed destined more to becoming the first UVA team in the Brian O’Connor era to fail to get an NCAA Tournament bid than it was to be his fourth to make it to Omaha.

“One thing that Coach O’Connor always reminded us that even though things might not be going that well, all our goals are in front. We still have a chance to get in the postseason and make a run,” said Kenny Towns, who had three RBI, including the tie-breaking sacrifice fly in the seventh, that pushed Virginia past Florida, 5-4, on Saturday to send the Cavs to the CWS Championship Series.

“Like we’ve shown this year, as long as you give yourself a chance, you can make a run late in the postseason. But I think especially as of late we’ve kind of been able to have a really good fun-loving attitude out here and kind of play loose and aggressive, and I think it’s really been working for us.”

That loose play has defined UVA baseball in the 8-1 run to this stage in the NCAA Tournament. The three previous Virginia teams that made it to Omaha – in 2009, 2011 and 2014 – entered the CWS with high expectations, particularly last year’s group, which was ranked #1 nationally for much of the regular season.

The 2015 ‘Hoos know they’re playing with house money, and that relaxed attitude has created an aura of destiny around what has been to this point a magical run.

“You know, perceiving through what we went through this whole year, injuries and some tough losses and just to be back at the finals again is, it’s crazy and it’s a good experience. We’re just happy to be back again,” said Daniel Pinero, who is hitting a torrid .571 (8-for-14) in the 2015 CWS, and keyed the opening win over Arkansas last weekend with three stolen bases.

But now that Virginia is back to the stage that it was on this time last year, playing Vanderbilt in the Championship Series, there are no moral victories in just being there. It’s clear that the Cavs know that no matter what they’ve accomplished in getting back to the Championship Series, there is still more work to be done.

“Would we like to hoist that trophy some day? Sure we would. And I’m confident one day that will happen. If we continue to give ourselves the opportunity. So we’re really here just continuing to play and have another opportunity. We’ll see what happens,” O’Connor said.

On paper, Virginia seems to be playing against the odds. Vanderbilt has its rotation set the way it wants it, with first-round pick Carson Fulmer set to go in Game 1, Philip Pfeifer slated for Game 2, and if necessary another first-round pick, Walker Buehler, ready to go in Game 3, whereas Virginia has Connor Jones for Game 1 and a plan to pray for rains to delay Game 2 a day or two or more.

But they don’t play games on paper. Because if they did, Virginia wouldn’t have made it past the Thursday-night opener in Chapel Hill.

“Winning doesn’t just happen. We learned that this year, and fortunately we were able to persevere through it,” O’Connor said.

“Whatever happens, I will look back at this team with a tremendous amount of pride. I think the lessons that they will have learned, that they learn every year and that they’ll have learned this year will be great life lessons to carry on with them for a long time. And I’ll always look at this team with a lot of pride.”

– Column by Chris Graham

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