Rotation switch boosts UVa
Mike Ballard's solid start lifts the Cavs in the NCAA tournament opener.
By Doug Doughty
981-3129

CHARLOTTESVILLE -- Brian O'Connor's decision to alter a long-standing, successful pitching rotation did not yield instant dividends Friday.

However, it didn't take long before the wisdom of O'Connor's move became evident.

Virginia went with fourth-year left-hander Mike Ballard in its first NCAA tournament game and the Cavaliers overcame a shaky start to defeat Lehigh 11-5 at Davenport Field.

In the process, Virginia (47-13) saved ace Sean Doolittle for tonight's game against the winner of the other first-round contest between South Carolina and Evansville.

The Gamecocks and Aces must wait to open tournament play until today after thunderstorms in the area forced postponement.

Game 2 will be played at 11 a.m. today. Lehigh awaits the loser of that game at 3 p.m.

Then UVa, and Doolittle, will take on the Game 2 winner at 7.

"As a coach, you've got to put yourself in position to win the entire tournament and I thought this [rotation] gave us the best chance to win the entire tournament," O'Connor said. "I know Mike and I know his pride."

Ballard was injured when the Cavaliers went to the NCAA tournament in 2004. In 2005, he was UVa's scheduled third starter at Oregon in the regionals, but the Cavaliers were eliminated in two games.

"I was definitely excited about the opportunity after not getting to pitch last year," said Ballard, who normally has pitches the third game of Virginia's weekend ACC series.

Ballard (9-3) gave up a two-run homer to the third batter he faced, All-America catcher Matt McBride, and the Cavaliers had activity in the bullpen when three straight Lehigh batters reached base in the second.

Ballard picked off one of those batters, his second in as many innings, and pitched into the seventh before giving up another run.

Ballard threw a no-hitter earlier in the season, but in his last previous start, had been the victim May 26 when Florida State beat Virginia 11-0 in an ACC Tournament elimination game.

That game ended early as a result of the 10-run "mercy" rule, but Ballard left early. He had given up seven runs in 2 13 innings -- the fourth time in five outings that he had failed to last six innings.

Fourth-seeded Lehigh (28-27) presented an opportunity for Ballard to work out his problems and he eventually did. It helped that the Cavs scored three runs in the first inning on two sacrifice flies and a bases-loaded walk.

UVa scored another run in the second, two in the third and three in the fourth, raising its record to 32-3 at pitcher-friendly Davenport Field. Ballard is 7-0 here this year and 13-1 for his career.

The first game was delayed 1 hour, 45 minutes by a wicked storm.

The humidity was so oppressive Friday that Ballard had to go to the locker room after each inning and wring out his shirt. He threw 114 pitches, and a 213-inning stint by freshman Andrew Carraway allowed UVa to spare its bullpen.

Within minutes after the first game ended, the second storm hit and caused evacuation of the stadium. Davenport Field then lost power.

It was a break for the Cavaliers, one of the few top seeds to play an early game Friday.

"We thought we'd have a good crowd whenever we played and I just didn't want to sit around all day," O'Connor said. "I feel bad for South Carolina and Evansville, but it had nothing to do with the weather. It hadn't rained here in weeks."

 

Doughty may be sent home without pay
Celebrated Georgia QB commits to Tech
Doug Doughty

I’m motivated to write today’s column because I feel Mike Dunevant’s pain.

Dunevant is a one-time Roanoke Times subscriber from Bedford County who tells me that the Times no longer circulates in Forest.

Forest is a bedroom community to Lynchburg (think Roanoke and Salem) and I imagine that it has less of a attraction to Roanoke than such other Bedford County areas as Bedford and Smith Mountain Lake. But I didn’t know that The Roanoke Times had eliminated home delivery in Forest.

I’ll check on that, but in a recent Dunevant e-mail, he asked how he could locate a list of the state’s top football prospects, particulary the juniors, that annually is published Dec. 25.

That list briefly appeared on roanoke.com, then disappeared. I’ve asked roanoke.com honcho John Jackson if he would consider creating a recruiting site that would include various lists and he expressed interest, but coding has been issue.

Patrick Beeson, who frequently is responsible for posting Notebook Plus and other specialty columns, said the lists would be easier to post if they were submitted in Microsoft Excel.

Is it any surprise that it has taken me so long to undertake this mission? I’m having enough of a problem today just finding my building pass. When I attempted to sneak in the building this morning, I was told, “Next time, you’ll be sent home without pay.”

No kidding.

I wouldn’t have had to stop by the paper if I had been located the Dec. 25, 2005 Roanoke Times in my home. But for all the 500 or so Roanoke Times sports pages and hundreds of USA Todays, Times Dispatches and assorted other papers with which I’ve littered the house, there were no Top 25s.

So, I made the 15-minute drive to the paper, argued briefly with the security guard, had to be identified by business reporter Andrew Kantor, visited the sports department, found last year’s Top 25 and came home.

Despite some initial reservations, the Microsoft Excel was the easy part. I’m still not sure how to center the columns, but I’ll let Beeson or Jackson take care of that and presumably it will be linked to this column (Get the list.) With any luck, we’ll have a recruiting site up before too long.

ANOTHER OF THE disappointments I experienced this morning came when I reviewed the Top 25 juniors list. Off the top of my head, eight Virginia juniors have made commitments to Division I-A programs and only two were on the list.

Those two were the state’s second-rated prospect, West Springfield quarterback Peter Lalich, who committed to Virginia, and the No. 15 prospect, Orange County quarterback Bradley Starks, who has committed to West Virginia.

Of the 10 players who have committed to Virginia, six are from the state. Just because a player commits to Tech or UVa doesn’t ensure him a spot on the Top 25, although an offer from both in-state programs usually does.

Two of the players who have committed to UVa, Culpeper linebacker Terence Fells-Danzer and Christchurch safety J’Courtney Williams, had offers from both schools and are likely to end up in the Top 25, possibly high on the Top 25.

Virginia’s other three in-state commitments are from Newport News Woodside linebacker Jared Detrick, Arlington Yorktown running back Max Milien and Gloucester linebacker Aaron Taliaferro. Tech received a commitment this week – its first – from Osbourn Park linebackler Quillie Odom.

It’s always difficult to know how to rate players who commit in the spring because they’re out of sight and out of mind after that. You have to go by in-season performance and word of mouth, which isn’t a bad way to judge players in the first place.

I DON’T KNOW how many of the prospects picked at Christmas of their junior year usually make the final Top 25 as seniors, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s less than half next year.

Conventional wisdom is that Hampton quarterback Tyrod Taylor and Lalich will finish 1-2 or 2-1, but I’m not sure who the No. 3 prospect in the state is. At Christmas, it was Kempsville running back Kevin Simmons, but I’d like to know a little bit more about Simmons’ eligibility status.

His brother, Deveon Simmons, was rated the No. 4 prospect in Virginia when he signed with Tech in 2005, but the older Simmons, who played at Landsdown High School in Virginia Beach, did not meet NCAA eligibility standards. At one point, he was to have enrolled at Louisburg (N.C.) Junior College in January, but that did not occur.

From what I’ve read, Tech has offers out to the Nos. 5, 6 and 7 players on the Top 25 juniors list (Davon Morgan, William Alvarez and Maurice Hampton), as well as the No. 18 prospect (Cris Hill).

The rising senior class is stocked with linemen. Three who didn’t make the top juniors list were Andrew Nuss (6-5, 280) from Stone Bridge, Blake DeChristopher (6-6, 300) from Clover Hill and Jaymes Brooks (6-3, 295) from Denbigh. Nuss told Mike Farrell of rivals.com last week that he has a top three of Virginia, Virginia Tech and Georgia.

Normally, it’s risky to put a lineman in the top five, but what is otherwise a very good recruiting class in Virginia is a little shy on skilled players aside from quarterbacks Taylor, Lalich and Starks.

IN CASE YOU missed it and I know I did, Tech picked up its second oral commitment Thursday from Brandon Barden, a 6-5, 225-pound quarterback from Lincoln County in Lincolnton, Ga., located near Augusta.

Barden played tight end for two years before moving to quarterback last year, when he led Lincoln County to a Class A championship. Coach Larry Campbell said he thinks Barden could play tight end if he gains weight and also could be a quarterback, outside linebacker or wide receiver.

“He’s one of the most widely sought-after players in our state,” said Campbell, who has won more than 350 games and has had a host of Division I-A signees in his 34 years, the most prominent of whom was Garrison Hearst.
 

Cavs jump all over Lehigh
UVa dodges rain, trumps Hawks in opening round
By Jay Jenkins / Daily Progress staff writer
June 3, 2006

The ghosts of Princeton past were washed away from Davenport Field on Friday.

For the first time in three years, Virginia coach Brian O’Connor rolls into the second day of an NCAA Regional in the driver’s seat - a very soggy driver’s seat.

Virginia, which lost to Princeton in the opening game of the 2004 Charlottesville Regional, overcame a heavy thunderstorm, a 105-minute delay and lightning in a bat during the opening inning to pull away from fourth-seeded Lehigh for an 11-5 win.

Like most of the patrons at Davenport Field were shortly after the contest, Virginia remains in the dark. Which team the Cavs will play today in the winner’s bracket will not be decided until today.

The second game scheduled between second-seeded South Carolina (37-22) and third-seeded Evansville (40-20) was postponed after another thunderstorm pounded Davenport Field just moments after the Cavaliers’ win.

The Gamecocks and Purple Aces will play this morning at 11 a.m. The winner gets UVa at 7 p.m., while the loser gets Lehigh in an elimination game at 3 p.m.

For a half-inning it looked like it might have been the other way around.

Lehigh (28-27) jumped out to a quick lead on All-American Matt McBride’s 12th homer of the season. With one out and a runner at second, McBride blasted the first pitch he saw from Mike Ballard into the temporary bleachers in left field.

“We had a man in scoring position at the time so I was trying to hit the ball hard, get it in the gaps, and just try and get him in,” McBride said. “I hit it pretty well and it went out.”

Virginia coach Brian O’Connor said the homer served as a wake-up call.

“I think that did something to our team,” O’Connor said. “Maybe it was a good thing to give up two runs, because our offense felt maybe the burden and said, ‘Hey, we’re going to really have to step up today.’”

Fourteen hits and four Lehigh pitchers later, Virginia proved O’Connor right. The Cavaliers, who snapped a two-game losing streak, scored in each of the first five innings, including three in the first and three in the fourth.

“I think that was one of the best offensive days of the year,” O’Connor said.

The run support was more than enough for Ballard, who settled down after a shaky start that included giving up five hits in the first two innings.

“I was just a little too excited and I guess a little too pumped up,” said Ballard, who improved to 9-3 and remained perfect at home this season. “I started to settle down when the offense put up some runs.”

Lehigh did not help its cause on the bases. The Mountain Hawks stole three bases but gave Ballard free outs when two runners were picked off first base.

“Anytime you do that against a good team,” said Lehigh second baseman Mike Sandonato, “you are digging a hole for yourself.”

Unlike Virginia, Lehigh struggled at the plate with runners on base. The Mountain Hawks stranded 10 runners, three more than Virginia.

“I think once they got a few runs on the board we started pressing a little bit,” McBride said.

Lehigh coach Sean Leary agreed.

“I think you can see that we have some talented players,” the young skipper said. “For us to have won the ball game, those talented players had to play at their best. In the first inning we had a few positive things happen, but our best pitcher didn’t have his best day.”

Lehigh starter Kyle Collina (6-6) faced 17 batters but only recorded seven outs. The senior was chased in the third inning after giving up six hits, three walks and six runs.

Leary gave the credit to Virginia.

“Boy, did they scrap at the plate,” Leary said of the top-seeded Cavaliers. “They fought balls off and have a good approach, and I think we would love to have another chance against those guys, to see what [Collina] could do; but today they just beat us. Today, they were just better.”

Four Cavaliers finished the game with multiple hits, including left fielder Brandon Guyer, who looked at only eight pitches in his first four at-bats, all of which went for hits.

“He just came up in RBI opportunities and he got good pitches to hit,” O’Connor said. “I have said it before, but in order for us to have big offensive days, somebody has to step up and have a big offensive day, and he did.”
 

Ballard makes coach look like a genius
By Jerry Ratcliffe / Daily Progress sports editor
June 3, 2006

Nowhere on Brian O’Connor’s resume does it mention anything about his riverboat gambler characteristic.

But it may have taken as much guts by the Virginia coach to come back so soon with pitcher Mike Ballard as it did for Ballard to deliver a Cavalier win in the opening game of the Charlottesville Regional of the NCAA Tournament on Friday night.

Last time out, Ballard was shelled by Florida State’s bats in a game that got so out of hand that the ACC Tournament’s 10-run “Mercy Rule” had to be invoked. His pitching line wasn’t pretty: 2.1 innings pitched, seven runs (all earned), off six hits.

Ouch.

That’s enough to make a guy hibernate for a couple of days. It’s also enough to cast doubt in a lot of coaches’ minds about opening up NCAA play with the horror show in Jacksonville still fresh on the mind.

Not UVa’s skipper.

Putting it behind them

“He’s won a lot of big games for us and so I wanted to run him right back out there,” O’Connor said of his senior southpaw, who improved to 14-1 at Davenport Field in the past two seasons. “I was so proud of him to see him gut through those first few innings.”

On a muggy June afternoon interrupted more than once by violent storms, it may have just been the biggest start of Ballard’s career.

Injured in 2004, he missed the Cavaliers’ NCAA regional. Last season Virginia didn’t hang around Corvallis long enough for him to come up in the rotation.

So, he was determined to make the most of his first-ever NCAA start even though he got off to a shaky beginning.

A rocky start

Davenport Field’s fences are so deep that even Roy Hobbs would only have warning track power. But that didn’t stop Lehigh catcher Matt McBride, who O’Connor called maybe the best player he’s seen all year, from ripping a two-run shot off Ballard, deep into the newly erected bleachers in left field to start the game.

That was one of five hits the Mountain Hawks would touch Ballard for in the first two innings.

But after that, the 6-foot-3 lefty settled down and quieted Lehigh until he left to a standing ovation after 6 2/3 innings, his ninth win of the season in his hip pocket.

“This is why I started Mike in the opener,” said O’Connor, looking like a genius now that he’ll come back tonight in the winner’s bracket with ace Sean Doolittle on the mound and solid Jacob Thompson waiting in the wings.

“I don’t think [Ballard] had his best stuff today, and that’s not to discredit Lehigh at all, but I just don’t think he was sharp, especially in the first three innings,” said the UVa coach.

A clutch performance

But Ballard dug down, gutted it out and pitched deep into the game, requiring minimum wear on his bullpen as Andrew Carraway finished off Lehigh in the 11-5 victory, improving UVa to 47-13 on the season.

It wasn’t easy for the starter though. Between innings, Ballard would retreat to the UVa restroom and take off his jersey so that managers could wring out the perspiration.

“It felt like 10 pounds on him because he was sweating so much,” O’Connor said. “They were trying to dry it off between innings because it was so humid out there.”

But what probably helped Ballard more than a semi-dry jersey was the timely hitting he got Friday that he didn’t get in Jacksonville. Virginia answered Lehigh’s two-run first with three runs of its own and scored seven more in the next four innings.

“We knew that if we could get on the board the first couple of innings and give Mike a chance to settle down that he would settle down and take us deep into the game,” said Doolittle, the ACC Player of the Year who was UVa’s designated hitter for the game.

That’s exactly what happened. As Lehigh second baseman Mike Sandonato pointed out, early on Ballard fell behind in the counts, but once he got his act together he started to get ahead, which made all the difference in the world.

“I was a little too excited, a little too pumped up,” Ballard confessed. “The defense made some great plays behind me and our offense really exploded, which allowed me to go out there and attack the hitters more.”

In fact, after Lehigh’s five hits in the first two innings, Ballard mowed ‘em down, retiring 10 straight batters over one stretch as the Cavaliers turned it on.

O’Connor’s leap of faith, gamble, show of confidence, or however you care to characterize the move, paid huge dividends. Virginia is 1-0 and in the catbird’s seat with Dr. Doolittle in command as the Cavaliers attempt to advance to the Super Regional for the first time in school history.

The riverboat gambler probably likes his chances.

 

U.Va. routs Lehigh
Fast start by visiting Mountain Hawks gets Cavs going for big win
BY JEFF WHITE
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER Jun 3, 2006

CHARLOTTESVILLE -- After a stormy opening day of the NCAA regional at Davenport Field, the University of Virginia baseball team is exactly where it wants to be: in the winners' bracket.

U.Va., the top seed of the four teams in this double-elimination regional, beat No. 4 seed Lehigh 11-5 yesterday in a slow, sticky game before a record crowd of 2,815.

The 12th-ranked Cavaliers, 32-3 at home this season, arescheduled to meet No. 2 seed South Carolina or No. 3 seed Evansville tonight at 7.

South Carolina and Evansville were to have played in yesterday's second game at Davenport, but thunderstorms forced it to be postponed until 11 a.m. today.

Mother Nature played a leading role yesterday. Virginia (47-13) and Lehigh (28-27) were supposed to start their game at 3 p.m., but the first pitch was delayed for 105 minutes after severe thunderstorms rolled in.

When the game finally began, the Mountain Hawks stunned U.Va. by jumping to a 2-0 lead. Joe Ercolano led off the game by singling off Cavaliers senior Mike Ballard, who'd been rocked in his previous start, against Florida State in the ACC tournament.

Lehigh's third batter, All-America catcher Matt McBride, pounced on Ballard, too. The Patriot League player of the year, McBride blasted his 12th home run of the season, sending the ball over the left-field wall of a spacious stadium where such bombs are rare.

"I think that did something to our team," U.Va. coach Brian O'Connor said. "Maybe it was a good thing to give up two runs, because our offense felt maybe the burden and said, 'Hey, we're going to really have to step today.'

"That was one of our better offensive performances all year long, and it was great to see."

Against Lehigh's ace, Kyle Collina, the Cavaliers rallied for three runs in the bottom of the first to take the lead for good. The barrage continued, and Lehigh coach Sean Leary replaced Collina in the third.

"Our best pitcher didn't have his best day, and boy, did [Virginia] scrap at the plate," Leary said.

Ballard wasn't sharp either, especially early, but he pitched well enough for U.Va. to win its opening game for the first time in its three NCAA tournament appearances under O'Connor. In 62/3innings, Ballard scattered seven hits, struck out six, gave up five runs and walked three batters.

"I don't think he had his best stuff today," O'Connor said, "and that's not to discredit Lehigh at all . . . but he gutted his way through it, battled his way through it and pitched us deep into the game, and I think that's going to serve us well from this point forward."

Sophomore left-hander Brandon Guyer led U.Va.'s attack, going 4 for 5 with three RBI. Freshman second baseman David Adams, junior right-hander Brandon Marsh and designated hitter Sean Doolittle added two hits apiece for Virginia.

Doolittle, the ACC player of the year, will start on the mound for the Cavaliers today. He's 11-1 with a 1.87 earned-run average.