The Cavaliers jumped back into ACC conference play Friday evening with the beginning of a fresh home series against California. No. 23 Virginia (32-17, 12-13 ACC) looked to continue a recent positive stretch that had included a midweek win over George Mason and a doubleheader sweep of Radford last weekend.
Coach Chris Pollard once again found himself entrusting sophomore southpaw Henry Zatkowski with the game-one start. Taking the bump for the squad in the first base dugout was junior Oliver de la Torre.
The Golden Bears (26-23, 9-16 ACC) jumped out to an early lead, with freshman infielder Jett Kenady nearly sending a ball over the bleachers in left field in the second at-bat of the game, putting California up 1-0 in the first.
The second inning proved even more detrimental to Zatkowski and the Cavaliers. The Golden Bears piled on the runs with a first-pitch grand slam off the bat of junior catcher Hideki Prather. From the game’s earliest stages, it looked as though it was simply California’s night on both sides of the ball.
The Cavaliers matched California’s brute-force production in the bottom half of the inning. A pair of singles from junior first baseman Sam Harris and junior catcher Jake Weatherspoon set the stage for junior designated hitter Kyle Johnson with the bases loaded.
Johnson extended on a hanging breaking ball out of the hand of de la Torre, sending it deep over the right-centerfield wall. Virginia’s own grand slam drove in Harris, Weatherspoon and sophomore right fielder Zach Jackson, bringing the Cavaliers within one run in an early slugfest at The Dish.
Bats went quiet in the third, however, and didn’t recover until the seventh inning for either side. Zatkowski and de la Torre looked embroiled in a war of attrition, trading quick frames and keeping the score deadlocked at 5-4.
The two workhorses went about their work in similar fashions, as well, both inducing lousy pop-ups and manageable groundballs. The occasional flashes of swing-and-miss stuff brought Zatkowski five strikeouts during the rest of his outing, and de la Torre three punch-outs for his efforts.
Virginia and California hitters looked perplexed at the plate, with neither team mustering more than two hits in the four innings from the third to the start of the seventh. A leadoff single courtesy of sophomore left fielder Carl Schmidt looked as though it could have been the start of an offensive push for the Golden Bears, but a quick double play and an excellent leaping snag on a comebacker to Zatkowski quelled the threat.
California would extend the lead in the top half of the seventh, though, with the replacement of Zatkowski in favor of graduate student Lucas Hartman, bringing with it two runs on a weak single from graduate student infielder Daniel Murillo. The right-handed Murillo flicked a full-count pitch into short right field, allowing Kenady and junior right fielder Gannon Snyder to score.
Despite noble efforts from senior Kevin Jaxel and freshman Christian Lucarelli to halt the damage in the eighth and ninth, the Cavalier offense was unable to find a spark. Jackson, Johnson and freshman shortstop RJ Holmes struck out in order in the ninth to seal the Cavaliers’ fourth-straight conference loss.
Outside of Johnson’s blast in the second, the Cavaliers did extraordinarily little with the bat, with just two knocks in the next seven innings. It showed on the scoreboard.
“We have to buy into our approach better,” Coach Pollard said in the postgame press conference. “More importantly, we have to have better competitive fight, and I told them both of those things at the end of the ballgame.”
The Cavaliers and Golden Bears will face off again tomorrow at Disharoon Park at 4 p.m. EST. Pollard and his staff are expected to opt for freshman John Paone on the mound. The game will be streamed on ACCNX.
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