UVA Baseball: Brian O’Connor is making history at Mississippi State

Times are tough right now for former UVA Baseball coach Brian O’Connor at his new gig, Mississippi State, which got swept at home over the weekend by Tennessee.

That makes two weekends in a row that #HailState has been swept at home – a program first.

The interwebs down there: not being kind to our guy.

“Well, BOC came to state to make history, so he has that going for him!” one smartass fan wrote on Twitter.

“Yet if you listen to BOC, you’d think this kind of thing happens all the time because it’s tough to play in the SEC. His star is fading fast,” wrote another.

Where are the legions who gave me crap last June for telling them the truth about O’Connor, who checked out on his Virginia team last spring despite getting a nice raise and extension in 2024?

I told y’all that he was just taking y’all’s money for the next four years so that he can retire before he hits 60, because he doesn’t like this new era of transfer portal and revenue-sharing any more than anybody else does.

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ICYMI

• Brian O’Connor got his bag of money from Mississippi State: That’s what this was about?

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UVA was paying him a mere $1.4 million a year to hold his nose and pretend to want to do the job; Mississippi State doubled that, and expected, what?

“You can’t, in this game, hit the panic button,” O’Connor said after a 7-2 loss to unranked Tennessee (24-12, 7-8 SEC, RPI: 28) on Sunday that completed the second straight home weekend sweep.

“There’s, obviously, you all watch the games, there’s things that we have to get better at, there’s things that we have gotten away from over the last two weeks that has made us a great team. We’re not doing that in most of the phases of the game,” O’Connor said.

Reality check: the six straight losses in SEC play ain’t the end of the world, as O’Connor is saying here.

#17 Mississippi State (26-10, 7-8 SEC, RPI: 21) is ranked as high as 13th in this week’s national polls, with an average ranking at 15.8.

Incidentally, #9 Virginia (26-11, 10-8 ACC, RPI: 17) is ranked as high as ninth this week, average ranking: 14.5.

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Both are still very much in contention for at least a Top 16 national seed, which would get them the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament on their home field.

This, despite the fact that neither is exactly playing lights-out baseball right now – State has lost six of its last seven: UVA is 3-4 over the past two weeks.

The good news for Oak: the schedule lightens up a little bit the next couple of weeks:

• starting at Samford (17-17, RPI: 123) for a midweek game on Tuesday.
• then three games at South Carolina (18-19, 5-10 SEC), which fired its coach, Paul Manieri, last month.
• with next week’s lineup featuring a midweek with Memphis (11-23, RPI: 149) and then three at home with LSU (22-15, 6-9 SEC).

Sweep the midweeks, and take four or five of six on the weekends, and you’re ready for the home stretch, which includes:

• a single game with #25 Ole Miss (26-11, 8-7 SEC, RPI: 13).
• three at #4 Texas (27-7, 9-5 SEC, RPI: 2).
• three at home with #13 Auburn (24-11, 8-7 SEC, RPI: 10).
• three at #10 Texas A&M (27-7, 9-5 SEC, RPI: 12).

Yowsers.

I can see why the locals are getting restless down there.

Chris Pollard, Oak’s successor at Virginia, has already played all the games against ranked teams that he’s going to get this season:

• taking two of three at #3 North Carolina (30-6, 13-5 ACC, RPI: 11).
• dropping two of three at home to #8 Florida State (24-11, 9-6 ACC, RPI: 6).
• dropping two of three at #24 Boston College (26-12, 11-7 ACC, RPI: 29).

UVA’s remaining schedule includes:

• three at home with Clemson (23-14, 5-10 ACC, RPI: 42).
• three at Pitt (22-12, 6-9 ACC, RPI: 73).
• three at home with Cal (18-16, 4-11 ACC, RPI: 64),
• three at Louisville (20-16, 6-9 ACC, RPI: 109).

I’d rather be Chris Pollard right now, personally.