At this point last season, the Cavaliers were 20-1. They finished 39-19 after losing in an NCAA tournament regional in Greenville, N.C. Many of the top hitters from that team are back this year, but UVA lost pitchers who accounted for two-thirds of the 511.2 innings thrown last season.
How pitching coach Drew Dickinson’s group would fare this year was uncertain, but through the first third of the season the Cavaliers’ newcomers have excelled. They include transfers Brian Edgington (Elon), Connelly Early (Army), Nick Parker (Coastal Carolina), Angelo Tonas (Georgetown) and Chase Hungate (VCU), and freshmen Jack O’Connor, Kevin Jaxel, Evan Blanco and Bradley Hodges.
“They’ve all been great,” sophomore shortstop Griff O’Ferrall said.
The new pitchers “want to prove themselves in this uniform, in the UVA uniform,” O’Connor said, “whether it be first-year players like Jack O’Connor and Blanco and Jaxel and Hodges, right on down the line. And then you’ve got the transfer kids … Those guys are out there every day pitching like they’re competing for a spot, and that’s great. Competition is a good thing. And so I’ve just been impressed with what they’ve done, and we need to continue to do what we’ve done up until this point.”
Every team takes on its own personality, said O’Connor, who’s guided UVA to the College World Series five times, with an NCAA title in 2015. It’s still early in the season, but the current Cavaliers have done “a really great job of picking each other up,” O’Connor said.
“There might be an error, and the pitcher does his job. They’ve shown really, really great poise and a high level of enthusiasm every day that they come to the ballpark. I’ve always said as a coach, you’re in trouble if you have to coach energy and enthusiasm, and you don’t have to do that this with this team. They love competition. They’re ready to go, and they treat each day like a new day, and that’s a good quality to have for sure.”
The Hoos are averaging 9.6 runs per game. They didn’t meet that standard against Georgetown, but they still totaled eight hits, including home runs by Jake Gelof and Teel.
Teel and junior Ethan O’Donnell, a transfer from Northwestern, have five homers apiece this season. Gelof, a junior, leads Virginia with seven and needs only five more to tie E.J. Anderson, who hit 37 in the 1990s, for the program’s career record.
“We’re playing a good brand of…