February college baseball is spring training games that count on your regular-season record. I understand why some coaches schedule tough games early, but really, they don’t help you in June – because, it’s February; June is three months and change away.
What you’re doing here, again, in February, is trying to get your pitchers innings, your position guys some ABs and reps in the field – get a little better every time out.
Virginia got a little better on Wednesday in its 11-0 seven-inning win over a not-good George Washington team that fell to 1-6 on the season with the loss.
The ‘Hoos (7-1 in 2026) scored seven runs in the first, highlighted by a leadoff homer from Eric Becker, then, second time through the order, a two-out, two-run Becker bloop double.
From there, the focus turned to the pitching staff – which had a 4.23 team ERA coming in – and the defense.
The defense has been, in a word, awful – 13 errors leading to 16 unearned runs through eight games.
You can’t give the other guys two runs a game.
Just can’t.
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The Virginia defense committed one error in Wednesday’s win – a first inning throwing error on a ground ball by Becker.
Freshman Jayden Stroman, who got the midweek start after two solid relief outings, pitched around the miscue, and finished his outing with two scoreless innings.
The staff had a clean day – seven innings, two hits, four walks, one hit batter, one wild pitch, seven strikeouts.
“Really proud of Jayden Strowman. He’s had two good outings, and has earned that start, went out and made the most of it, and it was big for us to get (Noah) Yoder and (Chris) Lucarelli going a little bit. We got to extend them, which was great,” first-year Virginia head coach Chris Pollard said after the game.
The strength of schedule ratchets up a bit this weekend, with three games – two in Charlottesville, one in Richmond – against VCU, which is 4-4 on the season, three of its losses to ranked teams (#8 UNC, #13 Coastal Carolina).
Then it’s two midweek games (March 3-4) at Charlotte (5-3) ahead of the start of ACC play, at North Carolina (March 6-8).
The time for figuring things out is down to the five games with VCU and Charlotte, basically.
The focal point for Pollard going forward: “the biggest thing for us right now is figuring out the depth of the bullpen, right?” was how he addressed that after the win over GW.
“We want those guys to be able to gain some confidence and momentum along the way. But now, the key is to start getting them in there and a little bit higher leverage opportunities, right?” Pollard said. “The first thing is just get them in a competitive environment, let them soak it all in, and still be in the strike zone. And now we’ve got to start growing into putting them in there in some more high-leverage situations.”
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Chris Graham
