UVa baseball garners national respect
Weekend sweep earns top-20 rankings
By Andrew Joyner / Daily Progress staff writer
March 16, 2004

New Virginia baseball coach Brian O’Connor speaks glowingly about his vision for this program.

He speaks frankly and with confidence when discussing Virginia winning ACC titles and competing in and hosting NCAA regionals.

Clearly, those aren’t just words.

As of Monday, the Cavaliers (17-2) rose to No. 19 in the Baseball America ranking and No. 20 in Collegiate Baseball’s poll. It is believed to be Virginia’s highest ranking ever at this point in the season.

The last time Virginia was ranked at all was when it climbed to No. 14 toward the end of the 1996 season.

There is certainly substance behind the national recognition.

The Cavaliers are coming off a three-game sweep at then-No. 17 Georgia Tech as they won by scores of 4-3, 2-1 and 8-5. In Sunday’s victory, the Cavaliers scored four runs in the 10th inning to give the school its first-ever sweep of Georgia Tech in an ACC series.

“I think not only the facts that we are 17-2 and swept Georgia Tech are important, but the way we won the games and where we won them definitely sends a message to the rest of the league,” O’Connor said Monday.

For their efforts this weekend, two Cavaliers were named ACC performers of the week Monday.

First baseman Joe Koshansky went 5 for 18 in the series, belting two home runs, a double, collected 10 RBI and scored four runs. Freshman lefthander Casey Lambert, a former STAB standout and the 2003 Central Virginia Baseball Player of the Year, was named the ACC’s pitcher of the week. Lambert pitched in all three games against the Yellow Jackets as he picked up a win and a save while striking out four and allowing just one run and three hits in five innings of work.

“Casey was critical in all three games. He’s a tough competitor and showed such great poise as a freshman to enter intense college baseball games and perform so well,” O’Connor said.

While O’Connor has brought a certain energy and now success to the program, it is a program at Virginia that has often operated toward the back of the sports consciousness in this community. Even with a new facility built before the 2002 season, Virginia baseball has been often dwarfed by the popularity attached to the Virginia men’s lacrosse program that captured its second NCAA title in five years last May.

Like most coaches, O’Connor doesn’t want to focus on such things as rankings at this juncture of the season. If anything, he hopes the rankings just bring an awareness of the team.

“I hope it sends a message and help rally support for the program. We want those in the community to be able to come out and see college baseball at its highest levels,” said O’Connor, whose team will host No. 25 North Carolina in a three-game series this weekend at Davenport Field at the UVa Baseball Stadium.

Virginia has not reached the NCAA tournament since 1996, but O’Connor says it’s a bit early to put the entire focus on that just yet.

“It’s a little too early, but a start like this is certainly critical. Certainly if you want to play in June [in the NCAAs], this is the way you want to begin. Right now, the players enter each game and believe they can win. That is so important in the game of baseball,” O’Connor said.
 

Ticket sales at 1,500 for NIT
By Andrew Joyner / Daily Progress staff writer
March 16, 2004

As of late afternoon Monday, Virginia had sold nearly 1,500 tickets for Wednesday’s NIT game against George Washington.

According to Dick Mathias of UVa’s ticket office, the sales are comparable to last year when Virginia hosted Brown in a NIT contest at University Hall.

“The volume has been similar to last year,” Mathias said. “We encourage those wanting to come to the game to purchase tickets in advance.”

Tickets for the 7 p.m. tipoff are $8 for adults and $4 for youth age 18 and under and UVa students. Seating is general admission. Tickets can purchased at the Virginia athletics ticket office in Bryant Hall at Scott Stadium today. Tickets can also be ordered by telephone by calling 1-800-542-UVA1 or (434) 924-8821.

Virginia (17-12) is making its third straight NIT appearance and fourth in five years. George Washington, a member of the Atlantic-10 conference, finished its regular season with an 18-11 mark.

The winner of Wednesday’s game will meet the winner of the Drexel-Villanova contest also on Wednesday. The date, time and location of that game will be determined Wednesday night. Often, the NIT examines tickets sales in determining which schools are rewarded with a second home game.
 

NCAA thought about Cavs
Virginia, which was considered by the tournament committee, will have a tougher nonconference schedule next year.
By Doug Doughty
doug.doughty@roanoke.com
981-3129

This much we know: Virginia received consideration for a bid to the NCAA men's basketball tournament.

UVa athletic director Craig Littlepage can attest to that. As a member of the NCAA selection committee that met this past weekend in Indianapolis, he was asked to leave the room when talk turned to the Cavaliers.

Virginia (17-12) eventually was eliminated from NCAA consideration and will play host to George Washington (18-11) at 7 p.m. Wednesday in the first round of the National Invitation Tournament.

"I can say that the University of Virginia was one of a number of teams that was under consideration for a long time," Littlepage said. "We certainly got on the board. We were definitely in the ballgame."

Virginia was rated 52nd by the independent Web site, collegerpi.com. Considering that 12 teams ahead of Virginia received automatic bids, UVa would have been among the top 40 teams under consideration and was one of the last five or six teams eliminated.

Florida State (18-13) was ranked 53rd by collegerpi.com, and presumably would have been part of any discussion to include a seventh ACC team. The Seminoles had a victory over Georgetown College, a non-Division I program, that would not have counted for NCAA Tournament consideration.

"It's accurate that the two resumes were very similar," Littlepage said. "Not to promote Virginia over Florida State because I was not in the position to do that, nor would I have done that as a committee member anyway, but we had an upward trend at the end [5-5 over the last 10 games] in comparison to Florida State [2-8]."

Aside from Florida State, Virginia did not have a loss to a team with a collegerpi.com rating lower than 21, but the Cavaliers have taken some heat and Littlepage did not hesitate when asked if UVa needs to upgrade its nonconference schedule.

"I can't say it was an issue or not for Virginia because I was not part of that discussion," he said, "but, using discussions of other schools, strength of nonconference schedule was something the committee spent a lot of attention looking at. A school like Richmond probably helped itself by playing a good nonconference schedule and winning some of those games."

Already, UVa must play Iowa State and Providence on the road, go on the road or to a neutral site for the ACC-Big Ten Challenge, and play host to Auburn in 2004-2005.

"We probably could use another top-100 opponent," Littlepage said, "and probably less games against teams with RPI's over 200 and more in the 100-199 range. At a school like, say, Montana, it's hard to jump on a bus and go two hours to play a quality nonconference opponent. For us, it would require only a slight alteration."

Littlepage will leave today for Denver, where he will be an overseer to first- and second-round NCAA games. There will be no discussion of the future of sixth-year UVa men's basketball coach Pete Gillen until his return.

"I don't think it's any less pressing," said Littlepage of the season-ending review he conducts routinely. "I'm going to do my job as I would normally do it, with no more or less urgency, in terms of trying to create some artificial timeline."

Littlepage denied published reports that UVa had decided to make a change before a late-season surge during which UVa defeated three Top 25 opponents and won its first ACC Tournament game since 1995.

"There has not been any sort of decision, nor has there been any sort of consensus that I have sought out or been a part of, " he said.