A stuffed animal sits inside Virginia’s baseball dugout. One may think it could be a runaway Build-A-Bear project, or perhaps a childhood keepsake. This figure, “Buffy,” is beloved by a group of 41 college boys. It is a mascot of sorts — though it looks nothing like CavMan.
Buffy is a physical representation of Virginia’s mantra — “be the buffalo” — spawning from a story introduced by Coach Chris Pollard. According to Pollard, there are three responses to a storm, which come in the form of different animals.
When a storm comes, he believes, the cow turns and runs away from the storm. The horse turns its back to the storm and waits for it to pass. The third option, Pollard stressed, is the buffalo. The buffalo turns and faces the storm head-on, and charges right into it. The buffalo emerges from the storm faster, more efficiently and largely victorious.
“The buffalo just goes straight into the storm, attacks it every day,” graduate catcher Noah Jouras said. “If you welcome that adversity and just attack it, you can get through it much quicker and come out even stronger on the other end.”
The mantra originated from Coach Adam Moseley, a high school coach in Alabama. Pollard and his staff hosted the Virginia Baseball Coaches Association convention back in December, and Moseley was one of the speakers present at the event.
Moseley, who has also spent time with Team USA, told the story of a loss in his program, and how they needed some mantra or mindset to move forward. Accordingly, they adopted “be the buffalo.” At the convention, Moseley put it up on the board and explained the scenario of the three animals responding to a storm. Fast-forward a few months later, and the Cavaliers have embraced it.
“When you get into a college baseball season, whether you think it's going to go well or not, or whether it turns out to be a great season in the end or not, you inevitably face storms along the way,” Pollard said.
So far this season, Virginia has been faced with plenty of adversity. A 14-0 mercy rule loss at Charlotte and a walkoff neutral site defeat at the hands of Stetson certainly stain the Cavaliers’ resume. However, Virginia then responded by winning two of three games at No. 3 North Carolina days later.
“You face adversity even in the best of years, and just being able to face that adversity head-on is going to be really important for this group,” Pollard said. “And it's something that we're going to continue to have to do.”
Pollard’s mantra has found its way into the game itself. When a Virginia hitter reaches first base, they put two hands up by their heads to refer to the buffalo’s horns, according to freshman pitcher Noah Yoder. The simple celebration rallies teammates to fight to win, as many innings as that requires. The celebration has become a staple of one of the nation’s most productive offenses.
The message is spread by Pollard’s assistants, too. Director of Recruiting Brian Sakowski echoed Pollard’s claim that the team has bought into “be the buffalo.”
“When [players] embrace struggle and force their way through the other side of it, and the positives that come with that, it allows them to just embrace it even easier the next time around, because they've seen that it works,” Sakowski said.
The phrase is especially relevant after dropping two of three at Boston College March 27-29. The top-10 Cavaliers lost a close opener and then suffered a complete demolition in a 17-0 rout.
Some teams would be unable to salvage a series after such a brutal blowout. But instead of tucking their tails, this Virginia squad responded by winning a pitcher’s duel and holding the Eagles to just one run in the series finale — securing a win in a type of game that the dynamic Cavalier offense has not found itself in frequently this season.
In the middle of the season, Virginia endured a small slump of sorts — dropping a home series to No. 8 Florida State before falling to James Madison at home. Then the Cavaliers entered a weekend finale at Notre Dame in a tied series. They were tested with yet another storm.
Virginia’s response was a 20-5 mercy rule victory to win a road series. Once again, the Cavaliers recovered. But the tests kept coming. A 6-2 loss at VCU curbed momentum, as did a series-tying loss to Clemson April 18.
But if the college baseball world is still unaware of the Cavaliers’ ability to rebound, it was displayed yet again in a series-clinching win April 19. Now, perhaps, the road ahead could become less arduous.
And as of April 22, Pollard’s squad will not face any ranked teams for the rest of the regular season. The goal for now is to keep pace as a top-10 team and climb the ACC rankings.
However, in order to do so, Virginia will continue depending on newcomers. The only returning starters from last season are senior outfielder Harrison Didawick and junior shortstop Eric Becker — and 28 of the other 39 players are either new transfers or true freshmen. With such an influx of newness, the Cavaliers have rallied around Pollard and his leadership.
One of Pollard’s players who embodies “be the buffalo” well is Jouras, who had to step up as a primary starting catcher for the first 18 games of the season until graduate Jake Weatherspoon finally made his Virginia debut March 14 against Virginia Tech.
Stability at catcher is especially important, given that Virginia has a cohort of four freshman pitchers logging consistent action each week. Any given inning could be a mini-storm to weather, given that none of those players have battled through the difficulties of an ACC season before.
Several hundred feet away in the left field grass, one of the most vocal supporters of Pollard’s mantra is Didawick, who has been with Virginia since the 2023 season. Didawick has battled through dozens of ACC series before. He knows the deal. But in terms of on-field production, Didawick has flashed great potential — he tied the program’s single-season home run record in the 2024 season — but also slumped to hit just .225 in 2025.
Pollard’s message to Didawick? To not just be the buffalo, and get through the storms, but to celebrate the storms just as much as the victories.
“Coach Pollard always says, ‘celebrate your failures,’” Didawick said. “I think that is huge for me. I think it's huge for everyone on our team, like, when you fail, like, be happy about that, because then you can respond. You have a chance to become stronger with it, which kind of goes hand in hand with the Buffalo [mantra].”
Didawick and company know storms are inevitable — there could be more instances where inexperienced players are required to step into an unprecedented role. There could be more instances where the Cavaliers have to respond after a nasty defeat. The goal, then, is to make sure that Virginia’s resilience is inevitable too.
“I love it,” Pollard said. “They've rallied around [being the buffalo].”
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