From the day Brian O'Connor accepted the Virginia head coaching position, two things he has constantly stressed have been excellent pitching and solid fundamentals. The team needed both of those factors to pull out a 2-1 victory against arch-rival Virginia Tech (8-18, 0-12 ACC) and sweep the weekend series.
"I think that no matter who it is in this league you've got to play really great baseball to win on the weekend, and it just happened to be against our rival, Virginia Tech," O'Connor said. "Today was a tough, hard-fought game and runs were tough to come by, but fortunately we pitched well and got some timely hits."
Junior pitcher Andrew Carraway pitched five and two-thirds innings yesterday, giving up four hits and one run while striking out seven. Though it was not a complete game like previous starters junior Jacob Thompson and senior Pat McAnaney accomplished Friday and Saturday, respectively, O'Connor was still pleased with Carraway's effort.
"Andrew did his job," O'Connor said. "He gave this team a chance to win and gave us a good quality start."
Even though Carraway gave up a run in the first inning off a double by Virginia Tech senior first baseman Sean O'Brien, Carraway was able to calm himself down for the rest of the game.
"It was a tough start, giving up a run early," Carraway said. "You never want that but you know that if you give up a run, it doesn't mean a thing in the first inning because you know that game is not going to end 1-0. Your offense is going to score runs for you."
The runs were hard to come by, but they came courtesy of junior first baseman Jeremy Farrell's home run in the third inning and freshman outfielder Jarrett Parker's RBI single in the sixth inning. That run would not have happened were it not for sophomore catcher Franco Valdes' execution of a sacrifice bunt that allowed runners to advance to second and third base.
"Today runs were tough to come by," O'Connor said. "The wind was blowing in, and I thought we hit some balls on the screws against their starter, and it just couldn't drop in. Franco did a nice job of getting that bunt down."
O'Connor said the staff stresses the importance of execution because in close games a fundamental play -- like Franco's sacrifice -- can mean the difference between winning and losing.
Yesterday's victory was the 200th for Brian O'Connor as head coach at Virginia. He gave credit for that milestone to others involved in the program.
"The 200 wins that I've been fortunate to get here at the University of Virginia is all because of the players," O'Connor said. "I've really got to give all of the credit to them and our assistant coaches: coach [Kevin] McMullan and coach [Karl] Kuhn have been right by my side, and those guys really deserve all the credit because they do a lot of the work."
Virginia is now 23-5 on the season with an 8-4 ACC record, and O'Connor believes his team is in good shape.
"I couldn't be happier to be 23-5 and in a good position in this league," O'Connor said. "I feel really good. I've told a lot of people that I didn't know how good this team would be until around game 35 or 40, and I think we're starting to see a little bit what we are capable of doing."
Even though this weekend's play was a nice bounceback from the lopsided defeat against George Washington this past Wednesday, this coming week is huge for the Cavaliers.
"We've got two games in the middle of the week against Towson, and we just need to come out and play hard and play with energy and treat every game the same," O'Connor said. "If we take care of business in the middle of this week we'll feel really good about going down to Tallahassee [to play Florida State]"
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