For the Virginia baseball team, next year was going to be the year. With merely a few of the team’s best players draft-eligible after this season, Virginia coach Brian O’Connor had the ingredients for a team that could finally get to a Super Regional of the NCAA Tournament for the first time in the program’s history.
This year? It was supposed to be, as the phrase goes, a rebuilding year. Get the freshmen infielders some experience. Figure out who can be relied on to start on the mound during weekend matches. Solidify a young bullpen.
From the perspective of a fan, it all sounded well and good. To senior pitcher Andrew Carraway, however, “rebuilding year” didn’t exactly roll off the tongue.
“If you come into your senior season and it really is a rebuilding year,” Carraway said, “then you’re gonna be disappointed.”
It has been far from a rebuilding year, though. Picked fourth in the Coastal Division to start the season, the Cavs went 19-0 for the best start in the nation. This past weekend, Virginia paid a visit to the preseason national No. 1 North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Though the Cavs lost two games in heartbreaking fashion to lose the series, they emerged with a win Saturday thanks in large part to seven innings of brilliant work from Carraway: one earned run on three hits and one walk.
This was a team that supposedly wasn’t going to be able to compete with North Carolina coming into the season. The Tar Heels are stacked; many of the Cavs’ key cogs are fresh off their senior proms.
The Tar Heels have “Dustin Ackley at first base who’s gonna be a first round pick; pitcher Alex White is gonna be a first round pick,” Carraway said. “You see these guys all over the paper.”
And yet, the Cavaliers came into Chapel Hill against a Tar Heel team fired up by a series loss to Duke the weekend before, and snagged one win and competed their brains out in two losses. The Tar Heels needed a two-run eighth to pull out a 4-3 win Friday, and a hit batter with the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth to walk away with a 6-5 win Sunday.
“We’re just as good as these teams we’re playing,” said sophomore Dan Grovatt, who hit a two-run blast in the top of the ninth Sunday to tie the game at 5-5 to allow for the bottom of the ninth. “We could very well be on the winning side of both of these [losses], and driving home with a sweep.”
Alas, though, the Cavaliers boarded the team bus with disappointment on their faces — and, a critic might observe, the series with UNC continued a pattern that has revealed the Cavaliers’ youth. In conference play, Virginia has lost four games decided by two runs or less. The aforementioned young bullpen has been spotty. In each of the team’s four conference losses — two to North Carolina and two to Miami the previous weekend – Virginia’s opponent scored the go-ahead run in the seventh inning or later.
It is a pattern of falling short that even extends to Virginia’s past. Five times in O’Connor’s tenure, the Cavaliers have been to the Regional, twice as the host and No. 1 seed; and yet, Virginia has failed to advance to the Super Regional each time.
The beauty of this year’s team, though, is that it is as resilient as any squad O’Connor has ever fielded. O’Connor as well as numerous players have said that this is the most tight-knit team they have been a part of at Virginia.
And no one has been rewarded more by this cohesive group than Carraway.
“On the field, off the field, it’s a group of guys that kind of sticks together,” Carraway said. “There are no cliques that pull teams apart sometimes.”
Though Carraway isn’t the only senior, he is the team’s most valuable and most decorated. A Lawn resident, Carraway was used in middle relief during his freshman and sophomore seasons before being moved to the starting rotation on weekends last season. Each year he has suited up as a Cavalier, he has played an integral role.
Now, Carraway is the only senior that makes regular contributions to a team dominated by underclassmen. Carraway even admitted that “it’s definitely a strange feeling.”
“A couple of the freshmen actually found out the other day that I was 22,” Carraway said. “[Freshmen Danny] Hultzen and Will Roberts are 18 I guess, and so they thought that was really funny.”
Each year he has suited up as a Cavalier, Carraway has stowed away his uniform for the off-season a little sooner than he had hoped. While many had written off this team as too inexperienced perhaps to even make the postseason, Carraway didn’t elect to return for a fourth year to follow the same dreary path as years past.
“One of the main reasons that I wanted to play this season was because I’ve got some unfinished business — that we haven’t been to the College World Series, haven’t been to a Super Regional,” Carraway said. “I want to be on the team that does that.”
Will Virginia finally get over that hump and make a Super Regional? Maybe, maybe not. But during Carraway’s final season, just being part of a team that has a shot is rewarding enough.
“It’s awesome,” Carraway said. “To come out and absolutely just dominate teams the way we started out, and then not only that, but to be able to play in the close ones like this, it’s just a great feeling.”
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