Having crept back into the top-25 rankings, Virginia softball is emerging as a serious threat to its remaining opponents. The Cavaliers have gone run-for-run with national powerhouses and boast one of the ACC’s best defenses. But that’s not all — the leap that the bats have made this season has been large enough to make Virginia’s offense one of the most efficient in the country. If they make a run in the NCAA Tournament this season, it will be because of their newfound explosive scoring ability.
While last season represented a step forward for the program, it ended on a sour note. Despite a fifth-place ACC finish, the Cavaliers went through the entire regular season unranked. They qualified for the NCAA Tournament and were eliminated in the final round of the Knoxville Regional — but they ended their year with their best postseason result since their only other tournament appearance back in 2010.
It was a season that Coach Joanna Hardin had “tons of pride” in, but there was no doubt that expectations would be higher going into 2025, with the Cavaliers receiving their first-ever preseason ranking from Softball America.
So far, it’s safe to say the team has risen to the occasion. As things stand, the Cavaliers are sixth in an ACC that is much more competitive than last season. For context, if Virginia had the same .625 conference winning percentage which got them to a fifth place finish last season, they would sit as low as eighth in the standings right now, depending on tiebreakers. In order for the team to have as many losses as they did last year — 20, to be exact — they would need to lose more games than are remaining on their schedule.
In examining why the Cavaliers have been successful, it is fair to say that Virginia is very well-rounded this season. The starting rotation and bullpen have performed admirably, but defense isn’t the primary explanation for their success. While pitching has been solid, the group’s earned run average actually is worse than last year — 2.76 this year versus 2.52 last year.
In reality, the secret behind the Cavaliers’ improvement this season compared to last year lies with the powerful scoring value provided by their bats. Their lineup boasts a .319 average versus .248 last year — ranking them nearly 200 spots higher on the leaderboards.
Their on-base percentage has also improved from .327 to .402, but the most dramatic change in rate-based statistics is their slugging percentage. It sits at .572 so far this season, up from .380 in 2024, meaning that the average bases hitters earn per at-bat has improved by around 150 percent. It’s not just that the Cavaliers are getting more hits — batters are extracting more value from each hit.
That theme is demonstrated through extra base hits. Loads of them. Revisiting last season, the Cavaliers ended 2024 with 55 doubles. Sitting just past the midpoint of this season, the team already has 53.
The disparity becomes even more dramatic when it comes to triples — 20 triples, good for second in the entire country, compared with nine total last year. As for the long ball, they have already homered 39 times, good for 27th in the country. They had just 36 last year and were ranked outside the top 100 in the statistic.
To put it simply — the Cavaliers are hitting the ball more, and they are getting more bases per hit. Thus, they are more effective both in wearing down opposing pitchers and scoring runs at a faster clip.
Teams which get this much value out of each at-bat tend to go very far. One look at the NCAA record books should make the importance of extra-base hits more obvious than it already is. Ten of the top 15 all-time leaders in home runs hail from Oklahoma, UCLA or Arizona. Those three programs are the only ones in the entire country that have more than two titles — UCLA leads with 12, Oklahoma and Arizona both have eight. Nobody else has seven, six, five, four or even three.
And just as those giants do, the Cavaliers play up to their competition. In 2024, their winning percentage versus ranked teams was .352 with a total run differential of -31, while this year, they have a .500 mark and a -1 differential in six games with ranked opponents.
This improvement could be seen on a tough trip to Florida earlier this year. While the Cavaliers managed to pick up a couple wins, one against No. 4 UCLA and one against No. 23 Kentucky, they lost to Auburn and No. 5 Texas A&M. However, these defeats came by one run in extra innings. So, in addition to the team having an incredible 18-1 record when playing at Palmer Park, they have also been more competitive in their losses on the road.
Bridging the gap between their success at home and their close frustrations elsewhere is both essential to success and extremely possible for this much improved squad. While the Cavaliers will have to travel just over half of their remaining schedule, their competition should present much less of a challenge than they have faced already. Their away and neutral-site opponents from the first half of the season rank, on average, at around 15 in rating power index — a stat which rates teams by their record and their strength of schedule — while their remaining away opponents average a rank closer to 50.
As for the NCAA Tournament, this team has shown they can hang with the best, and if they can continue their momentum and keep the pressure on opposing pitchers, advancing past regionals is a very real possibility. There’s no reason that the Cavaliers, who are playing some of the best softball in the history of the program, can’t make a deep postseason run when this offense is firing on all cylinders
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