This is the hole that UVA Baseball dug itself last night: seven stolen bases allowed, five errors, which should have been six, five unearned runs, which should have been seven.
When you score eight runs against a team throwing a staff day at you, and you’re throwing your ace at them, should be no problem.
“We did not play the game like we have played the last four weeks. And that’s disappointing to everybody in the program,” Virginia coach Brian O’Connor said in the early-morning hours on Thursday after his team’s ugly 12-8 loss to Boston College, which was the aggressor from the jump.
BC, whose season will be over with its next loss, played like a team with nothing to lose, scoring five runs in the first off UVA ace Jay Woolfolk, who had been masterful in his last two starts, in wins over Miami and Virginia Tech, striking out 13, walking four, giving up three runs, two earned, in 14 innings of work over those two starts.
Woolfolk, in the biggest game of the year for the ‘Hoos, with the season potentially on the line, only got four outs.
“Jay Woolfolk wasn’t himself. He didn’t he, you know, that was his first start all year that he’s looked anything like that. That’s, that’s to BC’s credit,” O’Connor said.
The first batter of the game, Josiah Ragsdale, reached on a catcher’s interference by UVA backstop Jacob Ference, starting the house of horrors top of the first that saw BC steal four bases, reach base on two Virginia errors, and an infield single that should have been the third, while putting up a five-spot.
The Cavaliers got two back in the bottom half of the first on a two-run Eric Becker homer, starting a pattern of call and response that would play out over the next nearly four hours.
The Eagles got two runs on a wild pitch by Virginia reliever Bryson Moore that saw Ference make things worse with an errant throw to the plate to try to get the first runner.
UVA answered in the bottom of the second with a pair of RBI singles from Becker and Henry Ford.
A throwing error by Becker opened the door for a two-run fourth by Boston College that got the BC lead to 9-4, where the score would stay until Virginia got back into it with four runs in the sixth, on a Becker fielder’s choice RBI and a three-run homer into the Durham night off the bat of Ford.
UVA got the potential tying run to third with one out in the seventh, but Harrison Didawick struck out swinging, and James Nunnallee flied out to center to end that threat.
BC put the game away with a three-run eighth, which, again, Virginia played itself into, with a hit batter, an error on a sac bunt and a wild pitch that plated one of the runs.
“We knew that they were going to the bunt at times to put pressure on you, and that bunt in the eighth inning proved to be a big one that we didn’t collect an out on it, and, you know, gave them multiple runners on and ultimately, they scored three runs,” O’Connor said.
“Certainly, their style is, you know, they go, they play the game with what they have, and they don’t have a bunch of guys in their lineup with a ton of home runs, but they’re going to peck your eyes out,” O’Connor said.
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Chris Graham
