Beavers bring Cavs' season to a halt
OSU grabs early lead, overpowers Virginia to advance to supers
By Jay Jenkins / jjenkins@dailyprogress.com | 978-7250
June 5, 2007

Omaha was just three wins away.
The magical place for eight college baseball programs annually, however, will remain a distant mirage for Virginia.
Playing shorthanded and with a make-shift lineup, the Cavaliers’ postseason magic disappeared on Tuesday as Oregon State used
a quick start to post a 7-3 victory in the championship game of the Charlottesville Regional.
With the win, the defending national champion advanced to host Michigan in a Super Regional starting Saturday. Virginia wraps up its season 45-16, having watched yet another opposing team enjoy taking a regional title at Davenport Field.
“It is obviously frustrating to lose the regional championship here at home,” said Virginia coach Brian O’Connor. “I felt like our guys gave it their best - I really do - and sometimes you just come up short.
“We threw a lot of different pitchers at them - we threw our guys that we have counted on all year - and it didn’t work. We had opportunities to have bigger innings and we didn’t take advantage of it. That is the story of the game and it is disappointing.”
Virginia, which played its last two games without corner outfielders Brandon Guyer and Brandon Marsh, struggled offensively against a collection of recycled Oregon State pitchers.
It was completely the opposite for the Beavers, who rallied for a 5-3 win late Monday night against Virginia to force the pivotal contest in the double-elimination event.
This time, Oregon State jumped out early on Virginia starter Casey Lambert, scoring a pair of runs in an opening inning that was keyed by an RBI double from Mike Lissman.
Lambert, who pitched 6.2 innings of near-perfect baseball to earn a victory over Oregon State in a 13-inning game on Saturday, struggled to get into a rhythm.
“Casey has a lot of pride,’ O’Connor said. “We all know what kind of pitcher that he is; I figured I would start it with him, throw some guys in the middle and throw Sean [Doolittle] the final two or three innings if we had a chance to win. It didn’t work.”
Lambert was given a new lease in the top of the second after Virginia loaded the bases with a pair of singles and a walk. Beau Seabury scored on a wild pitch and Tim Henry slapped a two-run double into left field, giving Virginia a 3-2 lead.
“Even though he gave up the first two runs, once we came back and scored three I felt like he was going to go out there and shut them down for an inning,” O’Connor said. “And it didn’t happen.”
Lambert, in fact, gave up a leadoff homer to Lonnie Lechelt on a full count that tied the game at 3-3.
“That was exactly what we needed,” said Oregon State starting pitcher Mike Stutes. “We needed to come in and answer real quick. [The homer] switched the momentum and got our team going back in the right direction.”
After fanning Braden Wells for the first out in the second, Lambert allowed three consecutive Beavers to reach, including one on an error that he committed on a ball hit back up the middle.
Eventually, O’Connor had to pull the plug, turning to his ace, right-hander Jacob Thompson, out of the bullpen.
Thompson, making his first relief appearance in his two-year career, allowed a sacrifice fly and an RBI single to Jason Ogata.
Despite falling behind, 5-3, Virginia did not quit. But the Cavaliers struggled to hit with runners on base, stranding two runners in the fourth and two more in the fifth after the Beavers turned to reliever Eddie Kunz.
Oregon State, after being stymied by Virginia reliever Alex Smith for 2.2 innings, added two insurance runs in the sixth off Cavalier freshman Matt Packer.
Virginia still had what turned out to be one last chance in the seventh. But after loading the bases on a single by David Adams, Seabury aided the Beavers’ cause, hitting into an inning-ending double play induced by Oregon State reliever Joe Paterson.
“I was excited and I knew I was in a clutch position,” Seabury said. “I was sitting on a fastball and [Paterson] took something off of it and I just rolled it over. It just didn’t happen for me.”
Kunz, who worked 1.2 innings of relief, earned the win on the mound, improving to 3-1 on the season. Paterson, who worked the final three innings, recorded his first save and was named the regional’s Most Outstanding Player.
Lambert took the loss for Virginia, finishing the season at 3-3.
Seabury earned all-tournament honors after catching every inning in the Cavs’ four games. Joining him on the team was Doolittle, who earned a win over Lafayette in the regional opener on Friday.
 

The mighty Cavs have struck out
By Jerry Ratcliffe / jratcliffe@dailyprogress.com | 978-7251
June 6, 2007

Brian O’Connor plopped down on a folding chair in the make-shift press tent, wishing he was there under different circumstances, wearing the frustration of his team failing to advance from the NCAA regional for a fourth straight year.

Coming into this free-for-all, O’Connor believed this was Virginia’s year. The pitching was there, backed by a solid lineup of bats, a healthy home-crowd advantage in a city that had fallen in love with Wahoo baseball.

Didn’t matter that defending national champion Oregon State had been shipped from the Coast Range of mountains to the foothills of the Blue Ridge. Bring ’em on. The Cavaliers had honed their Beaver cleavers.

By mid-afternoon Tuesday, it was those same Beavers sniffing Omaha once again, having taken two of a three-game set against the host Cavaliers for the region title and a trip back home this weekend to host Michigan in the Super Regionals, baseball’s version of the Sweet 16. Oregon State had shown its mettle, displayed how it was attempting to make an improbable third straight trip to the College World Series, but didn’t do a lot of celebrating at Davenport Field.

More work to do, we suppose. When you’ve been where the Beavers have the past two years, it takes a little more than escaping from a regional by any fashion to raise the level of excitement.

“For some reason, the big guy upstairs was saying it’s not your turn,” O’Connor said about his UVa ball club, which ended the season 45-16. “We’ve got to deal with that. We have to keep grinding it out and developing players and we’ll punch that ticket sooner or later.”

Yeah, it’s disappointing if you’re a Virginia rooter. There were convictions that this was a team that could make it to Omaha. But there’s a lot of other wannabes littering the national baseball landscape today: five of the tournament’s top eight seeds didn’t make it out of their regionals and 10 of the 16 hosts were eliminated.

It would be easy to make excuses for host Virginia to put an asterisk by its loss, noting that the Cavaliers entered the postseason event without arguably their best player in Greg Miclat, then losing two more key starters, bookend outfielders Brandon Marsh and Brandon Guyer, during Saturday night’s marathon win over Oregon State. O’Connor likened playing without Miclat to that of UVa’s basketball team minus All-ACC point guard Sean Singletary.

Still, there was hope by the record Wahoo crowds that their beloved team might still pull a miracle. Some, no doubt will second-guess O’Connor long into the summer, for the order of his pitching selections, or for not advancing. But the young skipper won’t second-guess himself. He played it partly from the book, mostly from his gut and his team simply didn’t get it done.

It’s not like Oregon State didn’t have anything to do with it. The Beavers, though they lost a ton of talent after last year’s title, still had plenty in the barrel. Maybe they had been on a roller coaster ride from a No. 2 national ranking to a serious slump, to bickering amongst themselves as recent as three weeks ago.

But they were champions. They knew how to get the job done, and when it came time, they put all the other garbage aside and played championship baseball.

Armed with a collection of perhaps the best pitching staff in college baseball, coach Pat Casey pushed all the right buttons in delivering another title. This one had a little dirt on it because that’s what Casey demands, that his players get down in the dirt and do whatever it takes to win. No distractions, even if some of the fans in the outfield heckled OSU shortstop Darwin Barney by serenading him with the “Barney the Dinosaur” song.

Virginia came into the regional sporting a collective .322 batting average, 17th best in the country, but that didn’t matter to the Beavers’ arms. The Cavaliers batted a mere .207 - ouch! - against Oregon State in the three games, even less than Rutgers, which hit .215 in two losses to OSU, a full 100 points below its average.

When O’Connor scouted the Beavers’ first win over Rutgers on Friday night, he sat with some pro scouts, and one of them informed him that five or six OSU pitchers were projected to go in the first five rounds of this week’s draft.

“I mean, we don’t have that,” O’Connor said. “I don’t know if there’s another staff in the country that we’ve faced that has that.”

It should be noted that in UVa’s three games against the Beavers, not a single Wahoo had more than one extra-base hit, including marquee player Sean Doolittle, who was proficient in his pitching win over Lafayette in the opener but struggled to produce as a hitter, going a paltry 1 for 15 at the plate.

O’Connor felt his star was pressing, looking for the perfect pitch, trying to lift the Cavs with a blast over the cavernous Davenport fences.

“He wasn’t being himself,” the Virginia coach said. “Maybe it was a good lesson for him for the future.”

Doolittle’s future will be determined by the draft, although he could return for another year should he choose.

Some of his teammates, the seniors, don’t have that option. They will hang up their jerseys knowing that they won more games as a class than any that preceded them in Cavalier history, but will look back on the NCAAs with the bitter remembrance of never making it to where they thought they belonged.

Sure, Virginia had more than its share of misfortune. But Oregon State had something to do with at least part of that.

Barney, a junior, conveyed that the Beavers believed that if they could get past the Cavaliers in Monday night’s game, which they did with a late rally for a 5-3 win, forcing Tuesday’s showdown, that nothing would stop them.

“We’re tough and we feel like if you’re going to beat us, you’re going to have to tear this jersey right off our backs,” the OSU shortstop said. “One through nine, we had guys coming through in situations where we haven’t all year … we’ve had our struggles, but I think the [CWS] experience definitely played a role in this.”

Oregon State has now won nine straight elimination games, where it was do or die.

Virginia’s returning players were probably taking mental pictures at each opportunity, noting where and how they fell short, how they may not have been aggressive enough at the plate against Beaver pitchers, about how to gut it out when it mattered most.

For O’Connor, trying to build the Virginia program into a consistent national player, perhaps this was just another step in the process, the early building blocks that could soon mushroom into an Oregon State-type of legacy.

But for the moment, there’s no joy in Hooville. The mighty Cavaliers have struck out.

 

No regrets for O'Connor
Coach not 2nd-guessing pitching strategy
By Whitelaw Reid / wreid@dailyprogress.com | 978-7250
June 6, 2007

Who would have thought that Tuesday afternoon’s game between Virginia and Oregon State - with a trip to the Super Regional on the line - would come down to environmental awareness?

Well, sort of.

“They recycled their pitchers and did a great job,” said Virginia coach Brian O’Connor, following his team’s 7-3 loss at Davenport Field. “We recycled ours and didn’t get it done. That’s the story of the game.”

Having played as many as four games in the previous five days - including a 13-inning marathon on Saturday night - both teams’ pitching staffs were running on fumes.

On Tuesday, O’Connor and OSU coach Pat Casey had limited options.

In the end, O’Connor elected to give the starting nod to closer Casey Lambert - the ACC’s all-time saves leader who had made just four career starts.

Unfortunately for O’Connor, Lambert - who worked 6.2 innings in picking up the win over the Beavers on Saturday - didn’t have his best stuff. The St. Anne’s-Belfield product surrendered five runs in just 1.1 innings.

“I feel for him,” O’Connor said. “He wanted the ball, and I think everyone was confident that he could get us off to a good start, but it didn’t happen.”

Lambert gave up two runs in the first inning. Then, after Virginia retook a 3-2 lead, he gave up a leadoff home run to Lonnie Lechelt.

The senior was subsequently charged with two additional runs after UVa ace Jacob Thompson relieved him. Thompson, who had pitched 6.1 innings himself on Saturday, allowed two hits and two walks in one inning of work as Oregon State went up 5-3.

O’Connor said part of the reason he picked Lambert to start stemmed from his decision to bypass the southpaw in the regional championship three years ago against Vanderbilt. In that game, O’Connor went with senior Chris Gale over Lambert, then just a freshman.

Gale gave up three runs in the first inning and Vanderbilt went on to a 7-3 victory.

“I said to myself that I wasn’t going to make that mistake again,” O’Connor said. “That guy was available and has a lot of pride. Nobody has done more in this uniform in the last four years than that kid. He deserved that opportunity. The breaks just didn’t go his way.”

Conversely, Oregon State’s pitchers held Virginia in check.

The Beavers received a workmanlike effort from starter Mike Stutes, who allowed three runs in 4.1 innings. Relievers Eddie Kunz and Joe Paterson shut UVa down the rest of the way.

The one pitcher who stepped up for O’Connor was senior Alex Smith. The left-handed specialist, who had worked a total of just 15 innings this season, pitched 2.2 frames of scoreless relief - the longest stint of his career.

“I felt really good,” Smith said. “My mindset was to just go out there and throw strikes and stay ahead of the hitters - the same thing I would do if I wasn’t out there for a long time. It was to just compete as long as Coach O’Connor left me in the game.”

Smith kept Virginia within striking distance.

However, Oregon State scored two runs off Matt Packer in the bottom of the sixth to go up 7-3 - a lead that proved insurmountable.

Sean Doolittle, perhaps pitching in his final college game, worked the last inning. The junior allowed just one hit and struck out one.

It begged the question: Why couldn’t he have started?

O’Connor said he gave the idea serious thought since Doolittle, with three days’ rest, was his freshest pitcher. However, he decided against it because it would have necessitated playing Ryan Hudson at first base. The senior catcher had never started a game at the position.

Jeremy Farrell, the team’s other option at first base, had not been medically cleared to play the field following an arm injury earlier this season.

“I needed to put the team in the best position defensively to win the game,” O’Connor explained. “I’ll never ever second-guess myself for starting Casey Lambert. They just got to him and got a couple of big hits. I had envisioned him throwing two or three shutout innings, piecing it together and throwing Sean in at the end … it didn’t work.”

 

OSU ousts U.Va.
Beavers advance as hitters don't come through for Cavaliers
Wednesday, Jun 06, 2007 - 12:06 AM Updated: 12:55 AM
By JEFF WHITE
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER

CHARLOTTESVILLE -- Davenport Field emptied quickly yesterday after all-ACC baseball player Sean Doolittle's fly ball to short ended the University of Virginia's season.

It was a fitting conclusion to an NCAA tournament regional in which the top-seeded Cavaliers hit a woeful .234 in four games. Six U.Va. starters batted .167 or worse in the regional.

Even so, Virginia won its first two games at Davenport, beating No. 4 seed Lafayette on Friday and No. 3 seed Oregon State the next night. The Wahoos needed only one more victory to capture their first NCAA regional championship, but the breakthrough eluded them for the fourth year in a row.

"We'll punch that ticket sooner or later," said Brian O'Connor, whose record after four seasons as Virginia's coach is 177-66.

Oregon State, the defending NCAA champion, avoided elimination Monday night by rallying for four runs in the last two innings and beating U.Va. 5-3. That set up another title game, and the third-seeded Beavers foiled the Cavaliers again. OSU held Virginia scoreless after the second inning and won 7-3 before a crowd of 2,389.

"I'm still in a little bit of a state of shock that we let it slip away," said Doolittle, who went 1 for 15 in the regional. "What were we, like, six outs away from hosting a super regional? That's a tough one to swallow."

U.Va. finished 45-16 with a lineup that included seniors Tim Henry, Beau Seabury, Mike Mitchell, Casey Lambert and Brandon Marsh and juniors Brandon Guyer and Doolittle, both of whom may turn pro this year.

The Beavers, seeking their third straight trip to the College World Series, have won nine straight elimination games in the NCAA tourney, dating to last season. OSU (42-18) will host Michigan in a best-of-three series in the NCAA super regionals, a reward that could been Virginia's.

"The players knew the scenario. We all knew the scenario," O'Connor said. "It's very, very frustrating."

Also frustrating for the Cavaliers were the struggles of their vaunted pitching staff, which came into the NCAA tournament with a 2.76 earned-run average.

After considering Doolittle for the start yesterday, O'Connor decided to keep him at first base early in the game for defensive purposes. O'Connor went instead with Lambert, who'd pitched brilliantly against the Beavers in relief Saturday night. Also available was all-ACC right-hander Jacob Thompson, who'd started Saturday night's game.

O'Connor said he envisioned Lambert "going out there and throwing two to three shutout innings, and Thompson throwing an inning or two and piecing it together with some other guys, and then throwing Sean at the end."

That plan unraveled almost immediately. Lambert lasted only 11/3 innings -- he was charged with five runs -- before giving way to Thompson, a sophomore making his first appearance in relief. Thompson struggled, too, and O'Connor turned to Alex Smith with one out in the third.

Oregon State, meanwhile, got a solid start from Mike Stutes, who'd also started against U.Va. on Saturday night. Reliever Eddie Kunz threw well, too, as did Joe Paterson, who'd shut down the Cavaliers late on Monday night.

"They recycled their pitchers, and they did a great job," O'Connor said. "We recycled ours, and they didn't get it done. That's the story of the game."

Down 2-0 after one inning, Virginia battled back for three runs in the top of the second. But Oregon State answered with three of its own -- one of which came on Lonnie Lechelt's 375-foot home run to left -- and led 5-3 by the inning's end.

It was 7-3 in the seventh when Paterson came in to face Doolittle, and U.Va. had two runners on and none out. Doolittle flied out to right, but David Adams' bloop single loaded the bases. Virginia's comeback hopes faded, however, when Seabury hit into an inning-ending double play.

For the season, the only Cavaliers to hit better than .301 were shortstop Greg Miclat (.376), second baseman Adams (.372) and left fielder Guyer (.370, team-high eight homers). Miclat had shoulder injury last month and missed the postseason, and Guyer dislocated his left shoulder in the fifth inning Saturday. They were sorely missed in the Cavaliers' final two games.

"You've got to have a little bit of good fortune from an injury standpoint," O'Connor said, "and we didn't."

 

Beavers put end to Cavs' season
Oregon State advances to the Super Regionals after taking two in a row from top-seeded UVa.

CHARLOTTESVILLE -- The sooner that Virginia could dispose of Oregon State, the better.

That's what Casey Lambert was saying Saturday night.

He was quite the prophet.

The Cavaliers let defending NCAA champion Oregon State off the hook Monday night and paid a steep price Tuesday when the Beavers eliminated UVa 7-3 at Davenport Field.

National No. 1-seed Vanderbilt was upset Monday night, so the opportunity to serve as host in the Super Regionals was at stake.

The Cavaliers failed to take advantage of the opportunity the first time around, despite leading 3-1 going into the eighth inning, only to fall 5-3.

"We were what, six outs away from a super regional?" UVa junior Sean Doolittle said. "That's a tough one to swallow."

Virginia (45-16) played from behind for most of the game Tuesday and was left to wonder if things might have been different if Doolittle had started the game on the mound.

Head coach Brian O'Connor went with Casey Lambert, pitching hero in a Virginia's 7-4 13-inning victory over Oregon State on Saturday, but Lambert could not recapture the magic from his earlier, 623 -inning, eight-strikeout stint.

The Beavers (42-18) scored twice in the bottom of the first, watched Virginia score three times in the top of the second, then knocked Lambert out of the game with three more runs in the second.

The last two runs were unearned, the result of a Lambert fielding error.

"I'll never, ever second-guess myself for starting Casey Lambert," O'Connor said. "I feel for him. I talked to him [Monday] night and he wanted the ball. I think everybody was very, very confident that he was the guy to get us off to a good start and it didn't happen.

Lambert declined an invitation to speak to the media, as had Michael Schwimer, the losing pitcher for the Cavaliers on Monday night.

"I get paid to make those decisions," O'Connor said. "This one didn't work. I remember, four years ago, we hosted a regional and got to the championship. Casey Lambert was available and I made the decision to start [senior] Chris Gale.

"We got off to a bad start and I said [Monday] night, 'I'm not going to make that mistake again. The guy's available. He's got a lot of pride. Nobody's done more in this uniform in the last four years than that kid.'"

Oregon State shortstop Darwin Barney said the Beavers' only suspicion was that the Cavaliers would start a left-hander -- Lambert, Doolittle or regular-season weekend starter Matt Packer.

Packer, a freshman, did make an appearance but allowed two sixth-inning runs when the Cavaliers were still hanging tough at 5-3.

The Cavaliers trailed by four runs by the time Doolittle took the mound for an uneventful eighth.

"I thought a lot about starting Sean," O'Connor said, "but there were a lot of factors that played into it. If I had started Sean, I would have had to play a guy at first base, [back-up catcher] Ryan Hudson, who had never played first base."

UVa had been in a bind since Saturday night, when right-fielder Brandon Marsh and left fielder Brandon Guyer both suffered season-ending injuries.

Marsh sustained a broken hand when he was hit by a pitch and Guyer dislocated his left shoulder while breaking up a play at the plate.

John Scaglione, who usually had played first base when Doolittle pitched, was needed in left field over the last 2½ games against Oregon State.

"I figured I'd start Casey, throw some guys in the middle and throw Sean in the final two or three innings if we had a chance to win," O'Connor said.

"There's no doubt that Sean was the freshest guy we had. But, I also had to put our team in the best position defensively."

As opposed to Doolittle, who had not pitched since Friday, Mike Stutes had started Saturday night for Oregon State but got the call again Tuesday with two days rest.

The Beavers' final pitcher Tuesday, Joe Paterson, already had won two games in the series and had thrown 39 pitches Monday night.

"All those guys had thrown multiple times in the tournament and they did a good job of gutting it out," O'Connor said.

O'Connor had known that runs might not come easy without his Nos. 1, 2 and 4 hitters for most of the season. Shortstop and lead-off hitter Greg Miclat, the team's top base stealer, recently underwent shoulder surgery.

Six of Virginia's nine regulars hit .167 or lower for UVa's four games, including a 1-for-15 performance by Doolittle, who was 0 for his last 11.

"Here's a guy who's your marquee player and just didn't have a very good offensive series," O'Connor said.

"I don't know if he put any added pressure on himself after Brandon Guyer goes out. It looks to me like he was pressing."

"There were [five] No. 1 seeds that got beat. That tells you that anything can happen. I think we've got to keep grinding it out and we'll punch that ticket sooner or later."

 

Holland building solid base at ECU
AD wants Pirates to define potential
A.J. Carr, Staff Writer

East Carolina athletics director Terry Holland, a Clinton native, has had a distinguished career as a basketball player at Davidson, as a coach at Davidson and Virginia, and as an athletic administrator.
Holland built a winning program at Virginia, compiling a 326-173 record that included two trips to the Final Four.

He later served as an athletics director at Virginia and Davidson and in 2004 became the AD at East Carolina. Holland, 65, whose contract extends through 2011, recently discussed several topics with N&O staff writer A.J. Carr.

Q: What are you most pleased about in three years as AD?

A: We've always had here people who have a great passion for the university and athletic program. I think we got somewhat distracted the last five or six years. Part of that was worrying about the BCS.

If East Carolina wants to be successful, we need to define for ourselves what our potential is rather than accepting that someone else can define our success. We've felt like not being in a BCS conference was going to limit our chance for success. Well, Utah and Boise State have shown us they didn't sit on their hands saying woe is me. It can be done.

Q: Are there other conference possibilities for ECU?

A: I think everybody is happy with their conference at the BCS level. There's always a lot of speculation that the Big East will have to add members. We've seen the impact of conference shifts. We know the next time around, we'd like to at least have the choice to decide whether we stay where we are or be in a different type of league. Right now, I don't see anything happening the next couple of years.

Q: With the heavy schedule, and the possibility of a down year, do you have concerns about this football season and keeping the Pirates' faithful enthusiastic?

A: We could be 2-10 easily. A big part of my job has been coaching our fan base and how we have to respond to adversity and prosperity. Eighty-two percent of the Division I-A programs have had a losing season since the year 2000. Everybody is vulnerable to that, particularly playing the kind of schedule we play [and breaking in a new quarterback].

This year, we're gonna struggle. We'll be up and down. We may have a winning season. We may go to a good bowl game. We will still have some games when we look bad. But the program is in great shape, and that's what we have to remain focused on.

Q: What is coach Skip Holtz' contract arrangement?

A: We've got him tied down another five to seven years. We've got a bonus structure that gets him up there pretty well. His first one is [after] three years and another one for two more years [later].

His average guaranteed compensation would be in the $850,000 range, and the closer he gets to the bonus payment he would be in the $1.2 million range. His average for the first three years would be $850,000-plus, and the next two after that would be close to the million range. It's a good contract but requires him to stay to collect a good bit of the money.

Q: Switching sports, what will it take to establish a solid basketball program?

A: Some stability. We have never had a good plan in place to determine what our recruiting area was.

Q: As a former basketball coach, what are your views on the 3-point line and other possible rule changes?

A: The most frustrating thing for me in watching our game over the last couple of decades is that we have so many different variations. We have high school basketball with its 3-point line and no clock. We've got women's basketball with a whole different set of rules. And we've got international basketball. And we've got the NBA.

I think we all should all be moving toward the international game. That is the measuring stick for the world.

Q: Are any building plans in place now?

We need to add seats [in the football stadium]. First, we need to create a program that will sell those seats. We need to get up around 60,000. We are low 40s. We need to replace our press box, and we need upgraded seating, either suites or club level. We do have very good facilities in most areas. They are very functional.