Harrison Didawick sends a laser to the outfield as the Virginia Cavaliers made a comeback to win. ~ Photo by Kris Wright/TheSabre.com
At this point, the Virginia baseball team maybe should just add an adjective for its mascot. The Comeback Cavaliers.
UVA, after all, owns 43 wins this season and nearly half of them have required a rally of some sort. The 21st and latest comeback win sent most of the 5,919 fans at Davenport Field to bed happy as the Wahoos overcame Mississippi State, 5-4, in the winner’s bracket of the Charlottesville NCAA Regional. Virginia is now one victory away from a Super Regional appearance.
“Either team could have won that ball game. It came down to we just did a little bit more and just really, really proud of our guys,” Cavaliers coach Brian O’Connor said.
Indeed, the margin between victory and defeat Saturday night proved razor thin. The Bulldogs had 10 hits. The Hoos had 8. Both teams had 1 error. Both teams got strong outings from their starting pitchers.
Still, for much of the night, Mississippi State seemed to be on the right side of that razor’s edge. The visitors led 4-2 after the through six innings thanks to a 3-run home run from Hunter Hines and an unearned run from Bryce Chance, who got a hit and eventually scored on a pick-off attempt gone awry. Starting pitcher Jurrangelo Cijntje had been dealing - he allowed 2 runs in the second inning, but mostly had been cruising through the remainder of the first six innings.
Virginia, though, had sat in the trailing chair plenty of times this season. The players said they trust their preparation in these situations, which keeps the possibility of a comeback alive until the last out in their minds. They didn’t need that long this time around.
The Cavaliers rallied in the seventh inning to tie the game at 4-4 when Jacob Ference and Harrison Didawick opened the frame with back-to-back singles. A Henry Godbout sacrifice bunt moved both into scoring position and Eric Becker delivered the single that tied the game on the third pitch of his at-bat.
Both teams threatened without scoring in the eighth before creating dueling runners on the corners situations in the ninth. Angelo Tonas came in for one pitch in the top half of the inning that got a groundout and Virginia escaped unscathed again. That set the table for the final course of the comeback.
Didawick was in the thick of it again. This time, he faced an 0-2 count as the inning’s leadoff batter but connected on a laser shot to center field and started running.
“I had absolutely no idea where the ball went,” Didawick said with a wide smile. “I was just running as fast as possible to go wherever I needed to go.”
As it turned out, the ball took one hop over the wall for a ground rule double that left Didawick in scoring position with no outs. Godbout walked, but ended up as the first out when Becker hit into a fielder’s choice play that set up the corners again.
Bobby Whalen stepped in next. Whalen had gone 0-6 in the NCAA Regional at that point, including three chances with runners in scoring position against Penn on Friday and another one in the second inning Saturday night. O’Connor said he had pinch hitter Anthony Stephan, who had a big NCAA Tournament showing last season, ready but decided to stick with Whalen anyway.
The Hoos put the runner in motion with Becker and “fortunately it worked” as Whalen made contact on a high chopper up the middle.
“When it was first and third, I just made the decision to stay with Bobby because he’s a pretty high contact rate guy and you put the ball in play and good things happen,” O’Connor said. “Bobby Whalen’s part of what college baseball’s about. He’s a tough, gritty fifth year senior that’s been at Louisville, been at Indiana, now here at Virginia, and just plays the game incredibly hard. It didn’t surprise me that he put the ball in play.”
Mississippi State’s Amani Larry tried to make the play near the bag at second base, but the bounce got away and the fielder’s choice/error combination allowed Didawick to score the game-winning run. That sealed not only the 21st comeback win of the season, but also the 6th win of the walk-off variety. Whalen has been at the plate for two of them (Georgia Tech/April 20).
The Cavaliers are now in the Charlottesville Regional final. After getting a walk-off win on Friday night, the Bulldogs get a rematch with St. John’s in an elimination game on Sunday. The winner will take on UVA at 6 p.m.
“This is why these players come to these schools is to have this opportunity where you have a chance to go 2-0, great crowd, everything at stake, and I’m just really, really proud of the grit and the fight that our team showed,” O’Connor said.
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