O’Connor grew up in Council Bluffs, Iowa, across the Missouri River from Omaha, and as a boy he attended the Men’s College World Series regularly with his father. O’Connor played in the MCWS as a Creighton pitcher, and this will be his eighth appearance as a coach. (His first was as a Notre Dame assistant.)
“I’m so excited to be here, because this opportunity is about this team and these players,” O’Connor said. “Fortunately, we as a coaching staff have had opportunities to be here numerous times, but this is their opportunity, and these young men earned the right to be playing here in Omaha and I’m just so excited for the opportunity that they have in front of them.”
Current Cavaliers who were elsewhere last season include graduate transfers Joe Savino (Elon), Jacob Ference (Salisbury) and Bobby Whalen (Indiana) and freshmen Henry Ford and Eric Becker.
Almost from his first practice at UVA last fall, Savino said, it felt “like you have an actual chance to go to Omaha and win it. Not saying we didn’t have a chance at my previous school, but it just feels more real here, and it’s exactly why I came here.”
Savino is a pitcher. Ference is a catcher who helped Salisbury make three trips to the Division III Men’s College World Series in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The Sea Gulls were NCAA champions in 2021 and runners-up in 2022.
“Obviously, making a World Series in itself is just a special experience,” Ference said, “and to do it at a different level is going to be a lot of fun.”
From playing on Division III’s biggest stage, Ference said, he learned the important of “trusting your teammates and not making the moment too big and just having fun out there. Obviously, at Cedar Rapids there weren’t as many fans, but the situation was the same where you can’t make the moment too big. You’ve just got to play for each other and play loose and have fun, because at the end of the day it’s still baseball and you’re going out there to win a ball game.”
Ference was in high school in 2016 when his travel team played in a tournament in Omaha. The MCWS was going on at the same time, and “we got to watch a bunch of games [at Schwab Field],” Ference said. “I was there as a spectator, and now I get a little different perspective of the stadium.”
For the first time since 2015, Virginia needed only five games in the NCAA tournament—three wins in its regional and two in its super regional—to clinch a spot in…