NCAA shuts out U.Va. parents

U.VA. vs. SAN DIEGO STATE
NCAA baseball
Tomorrow:7 p.m., ESPNU

By Jeff White
Published: May 28, 2009

There's no place Linda and Philip Wilson would rather be this weekend than the NCAA baseball regional in Irvine, Calif. Like the parents of most University of Virginia players, though, the Chesterfield County couple will have to settle for watching the team's games on ESPNU.

"We don't have a money tree in our back yard," said Linda Wilson, whose son Tyler is a sophomore pitcher for the Cavaliers.

In Goochland County, the father of U.Va. freshman standout John Hicks echoed that comment.

"We can't afford to go all the way across the country now," the elder John Hicks said.

U.Va. players from the Richmond area include Tyler Wilson (Midlothian High), John Hicks (Goochland High), sophomore outfielder David Coleman (Trinity Episcopal) and freshman pitcher Will Roberts (Maggie Walker Governor's School). For their families, the best-case scenario would have been for the Cavaliers to play at home on the NCAA tournament's opening weekend.

When the NCAA announced its 16 regional sites Sunday afternoon, however, Charlottesville wasn't among them. But Greenville, N.C., and Louisville, Ky., were, and neither city is an unreasonable drive from Virginia.

Coleman's mother, Cynthia, heard talk that U.Va. might be sent to the regional hosted by East Carolina, so she reserved hotel rooms in Greenville.

She canceled those reservations Monday. When the NCAA tournament pairings were announced that day, the Wahoos (43-12-1), champions of the powerful ACC, learned they were headed not to Greenville or Louisville, but to Irvine.

"We were really disappointed first that we didn't get to host ourselves," Cynthia Coleman said. "But then to hear that we were going to have to go to California again, after having done it last year, that was really a surprise. It really did add to our shock."

In 2008, Virginia was sent to the regional at Cal State Fullerton. That U.Va. team, however, needed a late surge to make the NCAA tournament and was seeded No. 3 in the four-team regional.

Coach Brian O'Connor's latest squad is ranked No. 7 nationally by Baseball America. The Cavaliers were locks for the NCAAs heading into the ACC tournament, and they enhanced their credentials by going 4-0 in Durham, N.C. On its way to the ACC title, Virginia beat Clemson, North Carolina and Florida State, all of which are hosting regionals this weekend.

"I thought there was no [reason] in the world we couldn't play closer to home with the record we had and the things we'd done," the elder Hicks said. "I feel like the NCAA cheated the parents out of the opportunity to see their kids play. I really do."

Irvine is more than 2,500 miles from Charlottesville. No team in the NCAA tourney had to travel farther to its regional than No. 2 seed U.Va., which opens against No. 3 seed San Diego State tomorrow night.

Virginia's athletic director, Craig Littlepage, said yesterday that he had a 20-minute phone conversation with Tim Weiser this week. Weiser, chairman of the NCAA's Division I baseball committee, is the Big 12's deputy commissioner and a former AD at Kansas State.

"Although I well understand the difficulty of the committee's task, I struggle to understand how our team was handled," said Littlepage, who has served on and chaired the selection committee for the Division I men's basketball tournament.

A year ago, neither Morton and Cynthia Coleman nor Philip and Linda Wilson made the trip to Fullerton, where the Cavaliers were eliminated. U.Va. parents remain hopeful that they'll see their sons play -- in person -- in the NCAAs this season.

"It's a little more than we can handle right now," Cynthia Coleman said of flying to California, "but we're going to save up for Omaha" -- home of the College World Series -- "and hope for the best."
 

Cavaliers unafraid of Aztecs’ ace
By Jerry Ratcliffe
Published: May 28, 2009

The way Brian O’Connor sees it, Friday’s NCAA tournament clash against San Diego State ace Stephen Strasburg isn’t as lopsided as some observers perceive.

While Strasburg — 13-0 and with a 1.24 ERA and 180 strikeouts in only 102 innings — is rated as the top collegiate pitcher in the country and anticipated top draft choice of the Washington Nationals, Virginia’s lineup isn’t exactly chopped liver.

The Cavaliers have been one of the nation’s top offensive teams all season, and while Strasburg’s pitches are regularly clocked over 100 mph, the Virginians aren’t about to back down.

Talent from top to bottom

“Our lineup is a tough one,” O’Connor said Tuesday before hopping a plane to the left coast for Friday evening’s prime-time, nationally-televised game. “There are no easy outs in this lineup and there are some guys who can knock it out of the park, while a number of guys can steal bases.

“It’s a matter of scratching, clawing, battling whoever we face — Strasburg, or whoever — to get runners on base and make things happen.”

The Wahoos were faced with such a scenario in last week’s ACC tournament when they faced North Carolina’s Alex White, arguably one of the best pitchers in the country. Taking on the Tar Heels’ ace in what essentially amounted to a home game for UNC (in nearby Durham) was what O’Connor described as this UVa team’s defining moment.

Everything was on the line, a chance to keep playing for a spot in the championship, and what Virginia felt like would be a higher seed in the NCAAs.

“How the team responded to that in that kind of environment was big,” O’Connor said.

Heels wave White flag

Virginia scored 10 runs in that inning and knocked White out of the game.

“I don’t think it was the 10 runs as much as it was knocking White out of the contest, then continuing to attack,” the UVa skipper said.

The Cavaliers’ MVP of the tournament, sophomore right-fielder Dan Grovatt agreed that was a big moment for the UVa team.

“We put up eight runs on him specifically, and that was awesome,” Grovatt said. “That was a tribute to our team. We were prepared. That’s exactly what we’re hoping to do on Friday night.”

Grovatt believes his club is peaking at just the right time and that they’re taking a chip on their shoulder to Irvine for the regional — the same chip they’ve clung to all season long.

“I feel like the entire year has been about us trying to prove ourselves,” the outfielder said. “We were young and everybody counted us out. We weren’t in the top 25 to start the year. We’ve always had something to prove and we’ve kept that edge all year. We’re one of the best teams in the nation and we want to prove that.”

While some fans may be fearing UVa’s matchup against the arm of Strasburg, the Cavaliers are actually excited about the possibilities.

O’Connor has plenty of motivational tools to keep his team focused in California. The team was obviously unfairly treated by the NCAA selection committee in a variety of ways, and O’Connor isn’t about to let his squad forget.

He sees this as an opportunity for his team to show the country just how good Virginia’s program really is.

“This is one of the best group of young men I’ve been around in terms of facing the challenges in front of them,” said the coach. “It’s the closest-knit group that I’ve coached. I’ve said all along that I felt like at some point that’s going to be of great benefit to us and that showed last week in winning the ACC championship.”

Winning that title, UVa’s first since 1996, was significant. O’Connor’s previous teams had played in a couple of title bouts, but had never pulled it out — something he considered a big hurdle for his program to finally clear.

Now, it’s an even bigger one, and one that brings the heat.

The Virginia coach isn’t as concerned with the Aztecs as he is his own group.

“The bottom line is we aren’t going to change who we are,” O’Connor said.

UVa will pitch the same way, keep the same offensive approach and play Virginia baseball.

“We’ve won a lot of games in the past but we haven’t been able to make a statement at the end of the year about who we are,” O’Connor said. “This time, that’s our focus.”
 

Wilson earns coach’s trust
By Jay Jenkins
Published: May 28, 2009

To most in attendance at the ACC tournament, Tyler Wilson appeared to be running on fumes late in Sunday’s title game.

Pitching on back-to-back days, Virginia’s reliever loaded the bases in the pivotal eighth inning and needed a pair of outs to keep the score deadlocked.

Virginia coach Brian O’Connor could have summoned another hurler from a suddenly-deep bullpen.

The skipper never budged in the Cavaliers’ dugout.

Magically, Wilson worked out of the jam by getting a strikeout and an inning-ending double play.

“I have said it all along, Wilson has big guts,” O’Connor said. “He’s a fiery guy out there and he is a competitor.

“I would imagine that I would have had to pry that ball out of his hand to take him out of that situation, and it wasn’t a good situation with the bases loaded and one out. But he continued to make the pitches that he needed to make.”

Wilson, who earned the win to go to 8-3 after Virginia scored three runs in the ninth, said he was thankful that O’Connor had that much faith in him.

“I really wanted the ball,” the right-hander said. “Giving up that leadoff double, I was kind of pitching around the next two guys to get into a situation to where we could work out of it.

“If you get out of an inning like that it is a high lift for our team. Getting out of that inning, putting a goose egg on the board gave our team so much momentum to come in and win that ballgame. It was exactly what we needed.”

Wilson is a huge part of Virginia’s bullpen, having logged 56.2 innings with a 2.96 ERA, entering the NCAA tournament opener Friday at 7 p.m. (ESPNU) against San Diego State in the Irvine Regional.

Facing the Aztecs, who earned an at-large bid after losing in the Mountain West Conference title game to Utah, will be a challenge. San Diego State coach Tony Gwynn is slated to start All-American Stephen Strasburg (13-0) on the mound, but could go with junior right-hander Tyler Lavigne (7-2).

“Being shipped to California is really is a reality check,” Wilson said. “But we are playing great baseball right now, and no matter where we go we are really confident right now and I really think we are going to take it to them.

“They play in the Mountain West and they haven’t faced anything like we are going to take to them out there. Nobody is worried about that one guy. We are going to show them how we do it on the East Coast.”

O’Connor said he remained uncertain of his rotation for the regional. Options in the opening game include freshman Danny Hultzen, sophomore Robert Morey, junior Matt Packer and senior Andrew Carraway.
 

Cavaliers not uptightabout facing Strasburg
May 27, 2009 12:36 am
BY STEVE DeSHAZO

It may be the least appealing reward this side of the men's basketball tournament play-in game.

After winning the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament title Sunday, the seventh-ranked Virginia baseball team had hoped to host a four-team regional tournament this weekend. Instead, the Cavaliers were sent across the country to play in a bracket hosted by top-ranked Cal-Irvine.

Worst of all, Virginia opens the double-elimination event Friday against San Diego State. The Cavs likely will face the presumptive No. 1 draft pick, Stephen Strasburg, with his 13-0 record, his 1.24 ERA and 102-mph fastball.

Aztecs coach Tony Gwynn told reporters he will probably stick with his season-long plan of pitching Strasburg first and won't hold him back "because of the toughness of our bracket."

Just don't expect much whining in Charlottesville.

"The whole San Diego State/Strasburg thing, I think it's great. Really," Virginia coach Brian O'Connor told The Richmond Times-Dispatch. "Our team has gone out to prove something all year long. Now you have a chance to prove what you're made of against arguably the best pitching prospect in the history of the draft."

The first batter to face Strasburg will be sophomore all-ACC outfielder Jarrett Parker (Colonial Forge). Parker had a quiet ACC tournament but still leads the Cavaliers in home runs (16), RBIs (60), hits (84) and stolen bases (19). He also is tops in strikeouts (61) and could add to that total against Strasburg.

 

U.Va. lacrosse: That’s a wrap
Jeff White
May 27, 2009

CHARLOTTESVILLE—In a quiet locker room at Gillette Stadium, Mike Thompson was asked about U.Va.’s prospects for the 2010 men’s lacrosse season.

“It’s hard to start thinking about next year so quickly, just because it was such a great group of seniors,” Thompson, a junior from Collegiate School, said after top-seeded Virginia’s 15-6 loss to Cornell in the NCAA semifinals at Foxborough, Mass.

“It always take a while to stomach the loss and the ending of a season.”

That was Saturday afternoon. A couple of days later, Cavaliers coach Dom Starsia reflected on 2009 and looked ahead to 2010.

First, though, he talked about 2008, when U.Va. finished 14-4 after losing in double overtime to eventual champion Syracuse in the NCAA semifinals, also at Foxborough.

“I felt like it was more of a crapshoot last year,” Starsia said. “We probably played our best game of the year in the last game. But when we got back in September, I told the kids that I thought we played our best game and it wasn’t good enough to beat Syracuse and that we had wasted a lot of time from September [2007] until that moment.

“This year I felt like the preparation was much better. It was a much more thorough effort from September [2008] until the opening faceoff in [2009].”

In his postgame comments Saturday at Gillette Stadium, Starsia referred to his team’s “epic year,” which included the pain of dealing with former U.Va. standout Will Barrow’s suicide.

On the field, the Wahoos posted several memorable regular-season victories, beating Syracuse, Johns Hopkins, North Carolina, Maryland and Cornell, among others, and they routed Hopkins 19-8 in the NCAA quarterfinals.

All those accomplishments notwithstanding, Starsia noted, “you sort of walk away feeling inadequate somehow. I think that there was a lot to be proud of here. Unfortunately our last game didn’t reflect, I think, who we are or who we’d like to think we are.”

When U.Va. was bad this season, it was awful. Duke twice thrashed the Cavaliers (15-3), and they weren’t competitive against Cornell in Foxborough.

“There was no indication that we were going to play like that,” Starsia said. “The kids had been attentive in practice. Were we taking Cornell for granted? I think anything anybody wants to say about that is probably fair. But I didn’t sense any of it. I thought we were ready. I did have a gut feeling, as I stood there on the sideline very early in the game, that, ‘This is going to harder than we thought.’ And it was. We just weren’t up to it, for whatever reason.

“The games can often be the fickle part of this process. You don’t always get what you deserve. You just get what you get. It’s a shame that we sort of finished up that way, but I don’t think it reflects on the quality of the effort overall.”

Going forward, Starsia said, “I’d like to see us be tougher. I think we could be tougher than we are. We’re athletic enough to be tougher. But we were better on [faceoffs and ground balls in 2009 than in ‘08]. We were mentally tough.”

U.Va. loses significant talent, including three of its top four attackmen: Danny Glading, Garrett Billings and Gavin Gill. But the offensive midfield, led by twins Shamel and Rhamel Bratton, Brian Carroll and John Haldy, should be the nation’s best.

Defensive midfielders Thompson and Chris Clements will return, and Max Pomper, a redshirt junior this season, may be back too.

Elsewhere, goalie Adam Ghitelman has two seasons of eligibility left, and starting defensemen Ken Clausen (a two-time first-team All-American) and Ryan Nizolek will be seniors in 2010.

Mike Timms, a four-year starter at long-stick midfielder, and defenseman Matt Kelly must be replaced.

“I think we’re going to miss Mike Timms in particular, miss his leadership a lot,” Starsia said. “He just did a lot for us this year.”

Matt Lovejoy, who redshirted this season while recovering from an injury, is expected to take over for Kelly, “and that could be a little bit of an upgrade, frankly,” Starsia said. “I think we’re OK back there.”

Only one attackman who played a leading role this year will be around in 2010, but it’s the reigning ACC rookie of the year.

“You feel pretty good about building an attack around somebody like Steele Stanwick,” Starsia said. “We got some really good young attackmen either in the program or coming. We’re a team that’s always sort of been built around our attack. So the fact that you don’t have Danny and Garrett is going to be a glaring omission early, but I think we’re going to be good there before it’s all said and done.”

Chris Bocklet, a touted recruit who played little as a freshman this season, is likely to start on attack next season. Candidates for the final spot there figure to including rising sophomore Matt Kugler and incoming freshman Connor English and Matt White.

“I think we’ve got some good young pieces there,” said Starsia, who singled out White. “I would tell you I’m not quite positive how it all fits together now, but I think we got some good young players.”

U.Va.’s home schedule for 2010 looks especially attractive. Among the teams that will visit Klockner Stadium are two-time defending NCAA champion Syracuse, Hopkins and Duke. For the second straight season, Virginia and North Carolina will meet in East Rutherford, N.J.
 

Landesberg update
Jeff White
May 27, 2009

CHARLOTTESVILLE – We knew Sylven Landesberg was serious about his famously intense offseason training regimen. Further proof came today in the form of an e-mail I received from USA Basketball.

Landesberg’s name was not in the release, which meant the rising sophomore from Queens, N.Y., had turned down an invitation to try out for the under-19 national team that will compete in the world championships in New Zealand this summer.

Virginia’s new coach, Tony Bennett, confirmed as much in an e-mail today. Bennett told me U.Va.‘s coaching staff had tried to persuade Landesberg “to pursue this opportunity, but he thought he could benefit more if he were at home.”

Landesberg, a 6-6 guard, is the reigning ACC rookie of the year. When I interviewed him late month, he mentioned the invitation he’d received from USA Basketball. He also spoke, however, with unfettered enthusiasm about his offseason workouts under the direction of his father, Steve, in New York City.

“We start early, like 5:30 in the morning, and usually end up finishing around 6 or 7 [p.m.],” Landesberg said. “So by the time I get home I’m just dead.”

Even then, it was clear that Landesberg was torn about the possibility of playing for USA Basketball, a commitment that would have taken up much of his summer. He was honored to have been invited and knew it would be a great experience, but Landesberg stressed that “the workouts I get at home, I would say they’re unmatched.”

Landesberg won’t be in Queens all summer. He’s due back in Charlottesville for summer school in July, from what I understand.