Virginia baseball has undergone a much-needed light stretch following their 0-3 showing at Pitt on NFL Draft weekend. The Cavaliers played just three total games in the ensuing 11 days, which consisted of a 5-1 win against George Mason, and two blowout victories over Radford.
In the year one of the Chris Pollard era in Charlottesville, his squad now sits at 32-16 (12-12 in conference play) with two weekends remaining in the regular season. Given UVA’s strength of schedule in the ACC, this is good
for an RPI ranking of 18th, which entails that the ‘Hoos are in line for a two-seed in the NCAA Tournament.
Most of the bracketologists agree, although Virginia may be further from hosting a regional than that metric suggests. D1Baseball’s latest bracketology has the Cavaliers as the 27th overall seed, and getting sent out to Lawrence, Kansas to meet the Jayhawks. PEAR Ratings, an analytically-based projection system, actually has the Wahoos as a high three-seed in UCLA’s regional.
Keep in mind that geography is important in the mind of the selection committee, so it is unlikely that the Cavaliers are to make that cross-country trip, but it provides a good idea of where the consensus lies on the quality of their body of work.
Looking ahead, the ‘Hoos will finish their season against a pair of programs with opposite trajectories. This weekend, they will host Cal, an ACC bottom-feeder that has recently found some life, which will be followed by a road trip to play a Louisville team that has lost five straight after a hot start.
Both of these teams are quite beatable, but even if Virginia pieces together a 6-0 or 5-1 stretch (and takes care of Richmond in the midweek), they should still enter the ACC Tournament with an uphill battle towards a hosting position. Meanwhile, barring a catastrophic ending to the season, the Cavaliers are virtually a lock to at least secure an at-large NCAA Tournament bid.
Ultimately, the goal will be to get into the postseason playing their best baseball, and most importantly, healthy. Quite frankly, the offense has been lacking in the absence of senior shortstop Eric Becker, who is still working his way back towards playing shape from an upper body injury. The pitching staff has been more consistent, but the defense behind them has done no favors.
At the end of the day, these final seven games of the regular season will be more about instilling confidence in the UVA clubhouse than adding last-minute data points to the resume.
