Hoos' Margin for Error Gone in Hattiesburg

By Jeff White (jwhite@virginia.edu)
VirginiaSports.com

HATTIESBURG, Miss. — When the bracket for the NCAA baseball tournament’s Hattiesburg Regional was announced last week, a Saturday showdown between Virginia and Southern Mississippi seemed likely.

Most observers, however, figured the Cavaliers would take on the Golden Eagles in a winners’ bracket clash at Jack Taylor Park. Instead, each stumbled Friday, and now second-seeded UVA (36-22) will meet top-seeded Southern Miss (44-16) in an elimination game Saturday at 2 p.m. ET.

In the first game of this four-team regional, No. 4 seed Little Rock rallied for four runs in the top of the ninth inning and stunned Southern Miss 7-4 on Friday afternoon. Virginia fell behind 9-0 and lost 15-7 to No. 3 seed Jacksonville State 15-7 that night.

The Gamecocks (47-13) pounded out 17 hits, including two home runs, three doubles and a triple.

“They executed well tonight,” UVA head coach Chris Pollard said, “and I think anybody that watched the game in person, or if you’re watching on TV, they just look more ready to play than we did. And that’s disappointing, and I accept that. I own that.”

Junior left-hander Kyle Johnson (1-3, 5.86 ERA) will start Saturday for the Wahoos, who face a quicker-than-expected turnaround. The Saturday elimination game originally was scheduled for 4 p.m. ET but, with rain in the forecast, was moved up two hours.

“We’ve got to be great at getting back, getting hydrated, getting rested, and waking up tomorrow morning with amnesia and getting off the mat,” Pollard said Friday night during a postgame press conference at which second base Joe Tiroly and catcher Jake Weatherspoon joined him.

All-ACC shortstop Eric Becker’s status for the game is uncertain. Leading off in the bottom of the inning, Becker was hit by a pitch on his left arm. He stayed in the game through the third inning, but RJ Holmes replaced him in the fourth.

Becker, who missed 13 games late in the regular season with an injury on his right hand, is hitting .320, with a team-high 15 doubles.

“I’m gutted for Eric Becker,” Pollard said. “He has worked so hard to overcome multiple injuries this year and was proud to be back for this team down the stretch. And I’m just disappointed for him. We don’t know what [Saturday] will bring in terms of how he’s feeling, and I don’t have a full assessment of the injury.”

Holmes had two doubles and scored three runs after taking over for Becker. In all, the Cavaliers recorded 12 hits. Tiroly and Weatherspoon had three apiece, and Holmes and AJ Gracia had two each.

“You’d like to think that’s enough [to win],” Pollard said of his team’s offensive output, but the Cavaliers struggled in the field and on the mound. Virginia made three errors against Jax State, which meets Little Rock on Saturday night.

Knowing that Jax State bunts often, Virginia fielders worked extensively in practice last week on that part of the game. That wasn’t apparent, however, on Friday night. Twice the Gamecocks reached base on bunts in the third inning.

“We just didn’t make two plays that we should make,” Pollard said.

This is Pollard’s first season at Virginia, but this is not a position with which he’s unfamiliar. In 2018, his Duke team lost its opener in the NCAA regional hosted by Georgia and came back to win four straight games to advance to a super regional.

“So we’ve got a lot of baseball ahead of us if we choose to play well,” Pollard said, “and we’ve got to be good at flushing this out of our system and getting off the mat and be ready to have our best possible fight when we come out [Saturday]. We’ve got a great competitor on the mound in Kyle Johnson, and I know he will give everything he has.”

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