The Cavaliers displayed their maturity and focus Sunday, embarrassing perennial powerhouse No. 12 Miami, 17-2, in the final game of a three-game weekend series. Sunday's victory was a bittersweet win for Virginia, as they already had dropped their previous two weekend games.
Friday, the Cavalier's suffered their first home loss of the season, falling to the Hurricanes, 6-1. The Virginia pitching staff could not silence the bat of Miami's Jim Burt, who launched two home runs and drove in four of Miami's six runs. Virginia junior right-handed pitcher Chris Gale (2-3) suffered the loss after giving up six runs in 6.2 innings of work. The Cavalier staff continued to suffer from a plague of injuries.
"You know when you look up and you see that both your number one and number two starters are hurt, Mike Ballard having a bad arm, and that kind of chops you down a little bit," head coach Dennis Womack said.
Hoping to bounce back from Friday's loss, Virginia took the field Saturday in front of a record crowd of 1,955 at Davenport Field. The Cavaliers fared better in front of the energized spectators and jumped out to an early 1-0 lead in the bottom of the second. The game teetered back and forth until Miami managed to take a narrow 4-2 lead into the ninth inning. But in that inning, the Hurricanes broke the game wide open, scoring six runs with the help of three Cavalier errors, one of which was committed by sophomore shortstop Mark Reynolds.
"When the ball came to me, I just choked," Reynolds said. "It was probably the most embarrassing moment of my life, but I worked on it in pre-game today and was able to come back and have a good game."
Sophomore southpaw Andrew Dobies (6-0) pitched 6.0 strong innings, giving up two runs. Senior relief pitcher Gabe Spooner (0-1) suffered the loss.
Despite the previous defeats, the Cavaliers did not get discouraged, letting out their pent-up frustration yesterday, pounding the ball for 15 hits and 17 runs in the game. Remarkably, Virginia put up these numbers in only seven innings of work. The game was shortened due to Miami's travel arrangements. The game was a mix of timely and patient Virginia hitting and an extremely poor defensive effort by Miami.
"We lost the first two games, but we bounced back with a real good approach," Womack said. "We had a lot of focus and concentration. We hit the ball well. But also they walked us and made some errors and played pretty sloppy."
Virginia jumped out to an early 4-1 lead through the middle of the fourth. The Cavaliers extended that lead to eight by driving home five runs in the bottom of the fourth. As if that weren't enough, Virginia tacked on another eight in the sixth. But the win left the Cavaliers lamenting what could have been, if they had brought the same kind of offensive power to the plate throughout the entire series.
"I wish we could have spread those 17 runs out over the entire series, but it's good to get a win in the last game of the series," Reynolds said.
Womack expressed a similar feeling of delight with yesterday's game, but dissatisfaction with the entire weekend.
"We came into this series wanting to win the series," Womack said. "Our goal was to win two out of three. So in some ways we are disappointed, but at least we won one of them."
Junior southpaw Joe Koshansky (5-0) picked up his fifth win on the season to remain undefeated. He pitched 6.0 innings, allowing two runs on four hits and striking out six.
Though Miami took home the weekend series win, Virginia showed they can be a team to be reckoned with. Not too many clubs are capable of posting 17 runs against a team that won the national championship just two years ago. Yesterday's game could prove to be a pivotal turning point for a young team, boosting the players' confidence for the season's stretch run.
"It was a day the sun kind of shown on us all day long," Womack said.
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