Top seed UVA (37-20) will start Alec Bettinger (2-5, 5.69 ERA) against William & Mary (29-29) in the opener of the Charlottesville Regional on Friday.
The move pushes #1 starter Connor Jones (11-1, 2.29 ERA) and #2 starter Adam Haseley (9-3, 1.73 ERA) back a day each in a roll of the dice that coach Brian O’Connor routinely makes as a top seed.
The idea is that Virginia can get a good enough start out of Bettinger and keep Jones and Haseley fresh for a winner’s bracket game on Saturday and then a possible championship game on Sunday.
Bettinger started the 2016 season as the closer before being moved to the weekend starting rotation in a switch of roles with Tommy Doyle, who flipped from Sunday starter to closer and has done well in that role (1-0, 1.20 ERA, 15K in 14 IP).
Bettinger (2-1, 5.97 ERA, 28Ks/21BBs in 37.2 IP over seven starts) hasn’t been nearly as good on his end of the switch.
His most recent effort, in a 10-9 Virginia loss to Wake Forest at the ACC Tournament last week, was not the kind of thing you want to try to build on, with a line of six runs on five hits in four innings of work, this after being staked to an early 5-1 lead.
The hope is that Bettinger can give the Cavs five or six decent innings, and that the bats can do enough damage early to allow O’Connor to close the game out without having to go to setup man Kevin Doherty (1-1, 4.08 ERA) or Doyle, keeping them fresh for the weekend.
The game plan will have to account for a William & Mary lineup that features four guys with pretty good pop – Charley Gould (.332/.439/.489, 5 HR, 43 RBI), Cullen Large (.330/.414/.515, 7 HR, 44 RBI), Charles Ameer (.286/.406/.469, 7 HR, 34 RBI) and Josh Smith (.256/.350/.434, 9 HR, 43 RBI).
Virginia knows what the Tribe is capable of offensively. The ‘Hoos won a March 1 matchup in Charlottesville by a 16-8 final, but the game was never entirely comfortable even after UVA scored nine in the first inning.
Story by Chris Graham
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