NCAA Regional Updates – Hoos, Rebels Win

Saturday, June 05 2010 by Tim

Around 4pm last night, the Virginia Cavaliers baseball team took the field as host of their own NCAA Regional for the fourth time in school history. The previous three outings (2004, 2006 and 2007) didn’t go so well for the Hoos as they didn’t advance to the Super Regional. Only last year, playing out of the Irvine Regional and facing Stephen Strasburg of SDSU State and then UC Irvine twice, did the Cavaliers manage to advance. Judging by the results of last night, the 2010 team is intent on bringing the success of last year to Davenport Field this year.

Virginia coach Brian O’Connor sent Cody Winiarski – normally Virginia’s #3 starter – to the mound against VCU in the first game of the 2010 Charlottesville Regional. Winiarski didn’t have the most successful outing of his career, giving up 4 runs on 7 hits in just 4.0 innings pitched. But when he left the game and middle reliever Tyler Wilson came in, Virginia was already up 7-1. Three more runs would score, all credited against Winiarski, who left the bases loaded for Wilson, but that was all the damage the Rams could muster.

The Cavs, on the other hand, would reel off 8 more runs on 16 total hits for the evening. Every single player on Virginia starting lineup would get at least one hit. Sophomore first basemen and catcher John Hicks, who finished the game a triple short of a cycle, went 4 for 5 and actual reached base on the one at-bat where he didn’t have a hit (I believe it was an error). Hicks combined with CF Jarrett Parker for back-to-back home runs in the fifth inning. Tyler Cannon, batting after Hicks in the line up, was about 5 feet short of making it back-to-back-to-back. If memory serves, they were the firs three batters that VCU’s relief pitcher Pelchy faced when he took over for a beaten Cutler-Voltz (7 runs on 8 hits, 2 strike outs).

Virginia returns to Davenport today at 6pm to face Ole Miss, who defeated St. John’s in the night-cap 10-5.

Ole Miss 10 vs St. John’s 5

Lots of Virginia faithful stuck around to watch the nightcap game between Ole Miss and St. John’s to see who would face the Cavaliers in the winner’s bracket on Saturday. Attendance was listed as 3434 for the game and while there were certainly plenty of Johnnies and Rebs in the stands, the bulk of the crowd wore orange and blue.

One of the reasons to stick around was to see Ole Miss’s likely starter Drew Pomeranz, one of the best pitchers in college baseball this year. There had been a lot of chatter about whether the Rebels would use Pomeranz in their first game or hold him for a (hopeful) second game against #1 ranked Virginia. The news had come quickly after the selection show that Pomeranz would face the Red Storm, but as Friday’s game time drew closer, the chatter picked up a bit.

In the end, Pomeranz did pitch against St. John’s and he got the win. I’m not going to drool over the guy like the folks behind me in the stands were doing – he had a solid, but certainly not outstanding, outing last night. But the key takeaway is that he went 7 innings and threw 112 pitches. While that’s not an excessively high number, it also doesn’t look like a number of pitches that someone is going to come back from on 2 days rest and pitch again. And that is important to Virginia because if the regional were to go to Monday – god forbid – there was some talk that Pomeranz pitching Friday could mean he could come back on Monday. And he still might – the game would be VERY important. But after pitching a normal full game for a starter, it seems less likely.

The Rest of the Field

I’ll finish with a quick summary of the rest of the field of 64 as it stands right now.

  • Cal State Fullerton was the only #1 seed to lose their first game on Friday. They lost 1-3 to #4 seed Minnesota.
  • Half of the #2 seeds lost to their #3 seed counterparts. Some of them, like California losing to North Carolina, were not unexpected as California was a weak #2 seed. Others had some crazy moments like #3 Hawaii upsetting #2 San Diego State when a HBP drove in the winning run in the top of the ninth inning.
  • The 8 ACC teams in the tournament went 6-2 on the day. All six of the winning ACC teams scored at least 10 runs. The two losing schools were N.C. State (a #3 seed losing to #2 seed College of Charleston) and Virginia Tech (a #2 seed losing to #3 seed Citadel).

We had pretty successful coverage of the first game last night here on Dear Old U.Va.. You can see the replay here. We’ll have similar coverage of the game tonight against Ole Miss over on this page (link may not be active until later in the day).