DURHAM, N.C. — You didn’t have to watch much of Virginia’s baseball season to know that this team was never too far away from making the NCAA Tournament. You could have just watched Thursday’s 4-2 win over No. 3 seed N.C. State in the ACC Tournament, and how the Cavaliers silenced the Wolfpack’s potent lineup.
Or you could have just looked at UVa’s ACC schedule and seen eight one-run losses — nine if you count the eliminating 3-2, 11-inning loss to No. 9 Florida State on Tuesday.
Virginia’s season was never too far away from a potential turnaround, but in the end, that turnaround was just out of reach for the Cavaliers, whose season came to an official end on Thursday. UVa will miss out on the NCAA Tournament for the first time in Brian O’Connor’s 15 years as head coach.
“I think they have lost like [eight] one-run ACC games,” N.C. State head coach Elliott Avent said. “That might be some kind of a record. That will drive you to do a lot of things if you’re Brian O’Connor.”
That’s kind of the question now, though. Where does O’Connor go from here?
He made it perfectly clear on Thursday that missing the NCAA Tournament was far below the expectation of this program, which has made four trips to the College World Series and recently won a national championship. That said, O’Connor was quick to defend where his program is as it heads into its longest offseason of his tenure.
“The competitor in all of us sitting up here, in no way are we satisfied with how it played out,” O’Connor said. “The level of our expectation, the players that are wearing the uniform and the coaches that are running the team, we have high expectations, and when that doesn’t happen, certainly we’re frustrated at times, disappointed, trying to always figure things out.”
The Cavaliers closed out the season with a 29-25 record, including a 12-18 mark in the ACC, a significant drop-off for a program that had not won fewer than 38 games in any season under O’Connor’s watch. Until this season, the Cavaliers had never finished below .500 in the ACC.
Virginia lost three midweek games to VMI, Richmond and VCU — all of whom had an RPI worse than 100. UVa also had weekend losses to Eastern Kentucky and Yale, teams that have very bad RPIs, as well as defeats against ACC cellar dwellers Virginia Tech and Boston College.
Combine all of that with the fact that the Cavaliers didn’t sweep any ACC series or go on an ACC win streak of more than two games and it became impossible for this team, which was picked in the preseason as the No. 16 team in the nation, to be in tournament contention.
“It doesn’t just happen every year,” O’Connor said. “You’ve got to be good. You’ve got to execute. You’ve got to continue to recruit. You’ve got to stay healthy. Sometimes you’ve got to get a little bit of luck, right. … It’s a — sometimes a readjustment, right, can be a good thing. So I’m going to choose to look at it as a positive. That it gives us an opportunity to step back for a couple of months and maybe make some adjustments for us to move forward.”
The question is what does that adjustment look like? There was a team meeting on Friday, followed by hour-long exit meetings with the returning players, as well as conversations with players who won’t be coming back.
As for the NCAA Tournament, O’Connor said he plans to watch it. His 11-year-old son is a college baseball fan, and he’ll take stock in how the other teams in the conference fair once the regionals start next Friday.
“Listen, our program is in an outstanding position,” O’Connor said. “We’ve got an administration that is 100 percent fully committed to our baseball program. Not only did we do a $19 million stadium addition during this year, before this year, we’re doing more after this year. Our recruiting is in tremendous shape. We’ve got an outstanding recruiting class that is coming in to Virginia, and we’ve got some really talented young players.”
Before O’Connor left the postgame podium for the last time this season, he delivered a strong message about his team and his program.
“There is nothing wrong at all with the University of Virginia baseball program,” O’Connor said. “I can assure you of that.”