Carla Williams waited out Duke’s run to the Super Regional, then when they were done, she got her man, Chris Pollard, who was introduced on Tuesday as the new head coach for the UVA Baseball program.
This is a home-run hire, a week after Virginia lost Brian O’Connor to Mississippi State for a boatload of cash to compete for a spot in the midcard in the SEC.
Contract terms for Pollard were not announced, but never fear – I have a public-records request already in so that we can find those out.
Pollard was reportedly getting $800,000 a year at Duke, which had given him a salary bump in 2023 after Miami made a run at him for the open coaching job there.
So, look at that, CW-haters. She was able to get somebody that Miami couldn’t get, not to mention, she poached the guy from the University of New Jersey at Durham.
Pollard is a winner – with 244 Ws at Appalachian State from 2005-2012, including a win over Virginia in a 2012 Regional game in Charlottesville, and a 420-296 record in 13 years at Duke, which hadn’t been to the NCAA Tournament since 1961 when he took over in 2013 and got fixed quickly, getting his team a tourney bid in 2016, and taking them on the first of their four trips to the Super Regional round in 2018.
In two of the last three years, Duke was one win away from a College World Series berth, losing in three games to Virginia in 2023, and falling short in Game 3 to Murray State last night in Durham.
From the Archives
That game ended shortly after 10 p.m. local time; the email announcing the hire was sent out to the media at 12:05 p.m. ET Tuesday, so, roughly 14 hours later.
What happened here behind the scenes, educated-guess time here, would start with Pollard, per the standard contract language for college coaches, requesting permission from Duke to speak with Williams at some point in the last several days.
Which is to say, yes, this was speed-dating, but no, it didn’t all happen in the last 14 hours.
A deal in principle would have been in place, I’m thinking, before the weekend, and it would have been docu-signed this morning.
Back to the home-run part of this: at the risk of blaspheming, Pollard is a clear upgrade over O’Connor, who, of course, led UVA Baseball to seven CWS appearances and the 2015 national title, so you’re going to need to hear me out here before you send slings and arrows my way.
O’Connor v. Pollard straight up is Advantage: O’Connor, but the O’Connor that we had the past 12 months wasn’t straight-up O’Connor, and probably wasn’t going to be going forward.
After signing a contract extension last summer that bumped his salary to $1.4 million a year, he spent the next several months complaining behind the scenes that he wasn’t getting enough money for his program to be able to compete on the national stage.
ICYMI
The complaining had an obvious effect on the 2025 season, which began with Virginia ranked as high as #2 in the preseason polls, then limping out to a 12-11 start and ultimately missing out on the NCAA Tournament entirely.
That O’Connor, who doesn’t think he can win with the second-biggest baseball budget in the ACC, isn’t the equal of a Pollard who has taken a Duke program that plays on a glorified intramural field to four Super Regionals since 2018, with around half the budget that O’Connor had access to.
With Chris Pollard, Virginia has a guy who can’t wait to be able to use the obscene amount of money that we spend on baseball to try to win more games.
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Chris Graham
