When Virginia took two of three at North Carolina back in the first March series, the season’s ceiling appeared to be a trip to Omaha, Neb. for the College World Series.
Fast forward to May, and the Tar Heels are ranked No. 2 in the country — their only series loss this year was to the Cavaliers — but Virginia is unranked. Somewhere along the way, a costly April slump tanked Virginia out of regional hosting consideration and squarely into No. 3-seed territory, or at best a low No. 2 seed.
Now, the Cavaliers require a solid ACC Tournament run to boost their chances of heading to a more favorable regional cohort. If Virginia loses in its first game, the Cavaliers could fall dangerously close to the wrong side of the NCAA Tournament bracket bubble.
The Cavaliers earned a one-game bye as the No. 8 seed in the ACC Tournament. Their postseason starts by taking on No. 16-seeded Duke at 9 a.m. Wednesday. The Blue Devils are coming off of an upset over No. 9 seed NC State the day before. Should Virginia win that game, they face top-seeded Georgia Tech Thursday at 3 p.m.
If the pressure wasn’t on before, it is now dialed up to 11. Coach Chris Pollard does not want to stress his team, though. Instead, Virginia seeks to stay present, focusing on the task at hand — getting out of that April slump.
“We just kept talking during that kind of stretch, that month of April, where we really struggled,” Pollard said postgame May 12 after defeating Richmond. “Just kept talking about the fact that [we] got to play our way to the other side of it.”
From March 27 to Saturday, the Cavaliers have gone 8-13 in ACC play. Pollard did not panic, though. Instead, he emphasized a focus on fundamentals, and the core values of his program. It certainly helped that Virginia got an ACC break from April 27 to May 7. During that break for exams, the Cavaliers had some rare in-season time off to focus on practice instead of conference games.
Pollard explained that the practice time was valuable — hitters had been pulling the ball too often, injuries had popped up and errors were too common defensively.
“I thought we used the exam break really well in terms of the work we put in, the preparation, how some guys made adjustments,” Pollard said.
Those adjustments resulted in a budding two-game streak of scoring 10-plus runs — although that streak was short-lived as Virginia lost its final two regular season games at Louisville. For the first time since 2019, the Cavaliers finished with a losing record in ACC play. However, Pollard has stuck to his same mindset throughout the season — regardless of whether the team is thriving or barely surviving the toils of conference play.
“[We] want to compete like crazy,” Pollard said. “We just need to stay in a one pitch mentality. Can't go up there and try to win game three on Wednesday [practice], right?”
Pollard knows the dangers of thinking ahead. Last season, when he was the head coach at Duke, the Blue Devils swept the Athens Regional in upset fashion — and their projected super regional opponent lost. That lucky scenario granted Duke a home super regional against nearly-unheard-of Murray State. A trip to the College World Series appeared inevitable.
The Blue Devils lost game three at home.
The Cinderella-esque Racers danced on to Omaha, and Duke was left heartbroken. In college baseball, anything can happen. Pollard and his group of Blue Devils-turned-Cavaliers that followed him to Virginia are acutely aware of that. The star of that cohort, junior outfielder AJ Gracia, echoed Pollard’s concept of staying present.
“We're not gonna approach the games any differently,” Gracia said May 12. “I mean, we try and approach the game the same every single day. There [are] no big games. No games are less important than others. We're just going to continue to work on what we do.”
If every game is a big game, then none of them are daunting. Gracia’s calm, laser-focused mindset — commonplace in the professional ranks — is contagious.
“We need to do a great job of staying where our feet are,” Pollard said. “We need to do a great job of being in the moment, competing one pitch at a time … You've got to win the day you're on.”
The Cavaliers have Sunday through Tuesday to get back in the practice lab. After that short break, though, comes the ACC Tournament. That tournament features some big games, whether or not Virginia chooses to acknowledge that fact.
The ACC Tournament provides an opportunity to significantly boost NCAA Tournament seeding. Hosting a regional is completely out of the realm of possibility for the Cavaliers, but regaining a decent No. 2 seed could still be within reach.
“Stacking days,” Gracia said. “[We are] just trying to stack one percent, get one percent better each day. I think you do that much of [stacking] days in a row, we're gonna like where we're at again this season.”
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