With the UVA Baseball team up 7-0 going into the bottom of the sixth, I mentioned to my wife that, you know, somebody hits a three-run homer here, we can get three outs in the seventh, and the game is over.
About an hour later, Miami had the tying run on base and the go-ahead run at the plate with nobody out in the ninth.
Life comes at you fast.
Brian O’Connor eventually figured it out, though it took him using four pitchers to get three outs in the ninth of the 8-6 win that finished off a three-game sweep of the ‘Canes (30-21, 14-12 ACC, RPI: 28).
O’Connor got another solid outing out of freshman lefty Tomas Valincius (5-1, 4.97 ERA, 1.28 WHIP), who took a shutout into the seventh.
Valincius ran into some trouble in that seventh inning, and his final statline was: three earned runs on five hits and three walks, with seven Ks.
The UVA pen, which was so good in the 10-9 come-from-behind win on Saturday, barely, by the skin of its teeth, got the job done on Sunday.
O’Connor needed to use six pitchers to get the last eight outs, as Miami put up a fivespot in the seventh, then got the deficit to 8-6 in the ninth after a Daniel Cuvet single that left the ‘Canes with runners on the corners and nobody out.
O’Connor used lefty Matt Buchanan to strike out Dorian Gonzalez Jr. for the first out, then went to righty Bryson Moore, who struck out pinch-hitter Jake Kulikowski for out #2.
Lefty Matt Lanzendorfer trotted out next, and he got another pinch hitter, Nolan Johnson, to hit a can-of-corn fly ball to center for the game’s final out.
With two pitches, Lanzendorfer notched his fourth save of the season.
Henry Ford (.368 BA, .990 OPS, 9 HRs, 39 RBIs) had two homers, four RBIs and three runs scored on a 3-for-3 day at the plate for Virginia (30-16, 14-10 ACC, RPI: 60).
The schedule says a game is scheduled for Tuesday night at The Dish with George Mason (35-17, 19-8 A-10, RPI: 98), but the weather forecast, calling for buckets of rain over the next three days, suggests that we won’t be getting that one in.
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Chris Graham
