Around the Horn: Baseball Season Begins
February 16, 2005
The Cavaliers opened the 2005 baseball season last weekend at UNC-Wilmington, where they dropped the opener but won the next two games. The highlight of the weekend was the successful return to the mound of pitchers Jeff Kamrath and Mike Ballard, both of whom missed the entire 2004 campaign following Tommy John elbow surgery.
This weekly feature will keep you updated on the UVa baseball team throughout the season with game recaps, previews and other notes.
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Lasorda Lends Support to Cavalier Baseball
February 7, 2005
Coming off its most successful season in school history, the Virginia baseball program called on Hall of Fame manager Tommy Lasorda to help the team kick off the 2005 season at its second annual “Step Up to the Plate” event. The program was held at Memorial Gym on Friday night and included a ballpark-like dinner of hotdogs, apple pie and baked beans, interview sessions with players and Lasorda, as well as live and silent auctions.
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Ryan Zimmerman: Playing 'The Right Way'
June 25, 2004
 Ryan Zimmerman loves baseball. But if there's one thing he can't stand, it's turning on a major-league game and watching a player loaf his way to first base after hitting a routine grounder or fly ball. It bugs him when players fail to hustle, make careless mistakes or otherwise, in his words, “disrespect the game.”
Why? Because, as Virginia coach Brian O'Connor says, “Ryan plays the game the right way.”
Zimmerman also plays it well enough to have earned a shot at representing his country. The rising junior third baseman is in Durham, N.C., right now at the 2004 USA Baseball National Team Trials. He is one of 36 players, all collegians, vying for 20 spots on the final roster.
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Audio Interview: Brian O'Connor
June 10, 2004
 In his first year as Virginia's baseball coach, Brian O'Connor led the Cavaliers to their most successful season in history. UVa went 44-15 and hosted an NCAA regional for the first time. Here he talks about the season and the future of the program in an exclusive interview with TheSabre.com.
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After Long Wait, Street and Werman Ready for Regional
June 4, 2004
 Except for a stash of curious reporters, a television personality and a few facility workers, Virginia's Davenport Field was relatively quiet after a Cavalier practice on Wednesday.
As Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Saturday Night Special" and Metallica's "For Whom the Bell Tolls" echoed through stadium speakers, a couple of Cavaliers took cool-down laps in the outfield and a pair played long toss in left, just two days before an event the Old Dominion state has yet to experience: an NCAA regional.
 But for this capable crop of Cavs, reading scouting reports, answering the same questions over and over again and practicing in June is a welcome change from the past eight years of Virginia baseball. And for two seasoned seniors, second baseman Kyle Werman and rightfielder Matt Street, four years worth of Cinderella dreams are now a Cavalier reality.
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Cavs Get Taste of Their Own Medicine
May 27, 2004
SALEM – Live by the sword, die by the sword.
Throughout the regular season, the Virginia baseball team thrived in close games, pulling out victories with clutch plays and miraculous comebacks. At the ACC tournament, however, the second-seeded Cavaliers could not produce the same type of magic.
After losing consecutive games to seventh-seeded Duke and sixth-seeded North Carolina State, both by a count of 6-5, the Wahoos found themselves in all too familiar territory, on a bus back to Charlottesville.
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Joe Koshansky: An 'Amazing' Transformation
May 26, 2004
 “Fastball in the low to mid 80s. Average offspeed stuff. Battles but doesn’t necessarily get a lot of people out. At the plate, strikes out a lot. Not a lot of power. Doesn’t hit for a high average.”
That’s Joe Koshansky, giving his scouting report on Joe Koshansky in his first two years on Virginia’s baseball team.
Self-deprecating? Yes, but also largely accurate.
Man, has that scouting report changed.
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Cavaliers earn ACC honors
May 25, 2004
Virginia’s baseball team didn’t quite get the top seed that it craved in the ACC tournament. But the Cavaliers cleaned up in individual awards as voted on by the nine conference coaches.
Joe Koshansky was named the ACC’s player of the year – the first Cavalier to receive that award – and Brian O’Connor earned coach of the year honors.
Third baseman Ryan Zimmerman joined Koshansky on the All-ACC first team, while pitcher Andrew Dobies and shortstop Mark Reynolds made the second team.
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Nothing Regular About UVa's Season
May 20, 2004
The most remarkable regular season in Virginia baseball history ended in the most appropriate fashion possible. Another comeback. Another Joe Koshansky blast. Another Casey Lambert save. Another improbable victory.
Except, by now, it’s hard to say any win by the Cavaliers is improbable. They have found so many ways to prevail under every conceivable circumstance that Wednesday night’s 5-4 triumph over Liberty was exactly what everyone at Davenport Field has come to expect.
“That game right there has been our season and is our team,” said first-year coach Brian O’Connor, the chief architect of UVa’s 42-11 record – its most wins ever in a regular season and best winning percentage since going 18-4 in 1940.
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Cavaliers Dig the Small Ball
May 18, 2004
A few weeks ago, in a home game against Florida State, the Virginia baseball team sent 10 batters to the plate in the first inning. Seven of them reached base. Four of them scored. Only one of them hit the ball out of the infield.
“We’ve had a lot of innings like that,” UVa coach Brian O’Connor said with a smile after three walks, two infield singles, an error, an RBI groundout and a double down the left-field line got the Cavaliers off to a 4-0 start en route to a 15-2 victory.
In baseball terms, it’s called “small ball,” and it’s yielded big results for Virginia (40-11, 18-6 ACC), which is ranked No. 7 in the latest Collegiate Baseball poll and sitting in first place in the ACC despite a pronounced lack of power.
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Andrew Dobies: Virginia's Special K
May 13, 2004
 At 6-1 and 190 pounds, he doesn’t have an overwhelming physique. He doesn’t possess a long reach like teammate Matt Avery, nor does he have a 100-mph fastball. Yet make no mistake: Virginia lefty Andrew Dobies is a strikeout pitcher.
Dobies leads the Cavalier pitching staff with 82 Ks in 80.1 innings, thanks to mental toughness, command of pitches and a wicked cutter.
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Cavalier Comeback Fails to Materialize
May 9, 2004
It was the kind of game the Virginia baseball team has found a way to win all season. Down by a run in the late innings, the Cavaliers were getting good pitching. They were playing superb defense. All they needed was the clutch hit, the big play, the timely rally that they have produced so many times this spring.
Except Sunday afternoon, it didn’t happen. Instead, No. 24 Florida State came up with the key hit – a two-out, two-run double in the seventh inning – and thwarted No. 7 Virginia, 4-1, in the rubber match of their three-game series at Davenport Field.
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Virginia Bounces Back With Big Win
May 9, 2004
You can admit it. As a Virginia baseball fan, you were starting to have doubts. You’ve loved all the amazing comebacks and one-run wins. You’ve admired the heart and pluck of the players. But you had to wonder, especially after UVa was blown out in three of its past five games, just how good is this team, really?
An emphatic answer came Saturday night in front of another capacity crowd at Davenport Field.
The No. 7 Cavaliers crushed No. 24 Florida State, 15-2, and there was absolutely nothing lucky about it. They used small ball, long ball, great pitching and flawless defense to maintain their stranglehold on first place in the ACC and delivered a statement at the same time: We’re good, and we’re for real.
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For Cavs, a Familiar Result Against FSU
May 8, 2004
Walking around UVa Baseball Stadium on Friday night, it was obvious how much things have changed in Virginia’s baseball program. A team that used to draw a few dozen fans had a record crowd of 2,430 on hand for the opener of a three-game series with Florida State. There was a buzz, an electricity in the stadium that was the result of the team’s improbable success throughout the season.
Unfortunately, one thing did not change: The Seminoles still own the Cavaliers. The 8-0 rout was UVa’s seventh straight loss against FSU and 20th in their past 22 meetings.
Talk about buzzkill.
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UVa Baseball: Ready for Next Level?
April 23, 2004
So far, the Virginia baseball team has been a nice local story, maybe even a regional one. Within the sport, UVa’s success has been the talk of the state and the ACC. This weekend, however, the Cavaliers can go national.
“This is going to put us on the map,” senior Joe Koshansky said of 15th-ranked Virginia’s three-game series against No. 4 Miami, to be played Friday, Saturday and Sunday at Mark Light Field in Coral Gables, Fla.
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Cavs Hammer Hokies for 14th Straight Win
April 21, 2004
Forget small ball. Forget the pitching and defense and baserunning that produced 13 straight victories. On Wednesday night, the 15th-ranked Virginia baseball team did something different to extend the longest winning streak in school history.
The Cavaliers bashed, bombed and slugged their way to a 21-10 triumph over Virginia Tech, pounding out a pair of nine-run innings in a crowd-pleasing display of offense at jam-packed Davenport Field.
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Lucky No. 13: Cavs Set School Record
April 20, 2004
Brian O’Connor didn’t even know that his first Virginia baseball team had made some more history Tuesday night. Told that the Cavaliers had just set a school record with their 13th straight victory, breaking a mark that had stood for more than a century, he just shook his head and smiled.
“Wow, that’s awesome,” he said.
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A Day to Remember for UVa Baseball
April 13, 2004
Last Saturday was a special day in Virginia baseball history. The Cavaliers beat Clemson twice in a doubleheader, completing a three-game series sweep, their first over the Tigers since 1972. They moved into first place in the ACC standings at 11-4 (29-7 overall) and continued their ascent under first-year coach Brian O'Connor.
The following are some news, notes and key plays from a glorious afternoon of baseball at Davenport Field.
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Baseball Report: Heading into Weekend Clemson Series, Hoos 26-7
April 9, 2004
With a three-game sweep of Duke last weekend, the UVa baseball team pushed their ACC record to 8-4, good enough for third place as they prepare for this weekend's series with Clemson, the top team in the conference.
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Baseball Report: 25th-Ranked Hoos Go to 19-5 on the Season
March 25, 2004
On May 12-14, the Cavs swept a three game series from the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets, then No. 17 in the country, in Atlanta and proved to naysayers that the team’s early season success was legitimate. It was the first time Virginia ever swept Georgia Tech in a three game series.
“Were going into every game to win, we’re not going to back down from anybody,” Virginia coach Brian O’Connor said. “In college athletics, I think sometimes you get situations where history has told you, or what you’ve experienced in places in the past, that deep down you go in as a player and say, ‘boy, we’d like to win, but can we really pull this off?’ I really believe that these kids believe with 100% of everything they have in their body, that no matter where we go or who the opponent is, that we are going to win that game."
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Baseball Report: Hoos Start Out Strong on the Diamond
March 9, 2004
The 2004 Virginia baseball media guide opens its season preview section with, "In 2003, the Virginia Cavaliers officially turned the corner." If the Cavaliers officially turned the corner in 2003; then today, they are around the corner, passed the next block and a hop, skip and jump off the neighborhood baseball diamond.
Yes, Sabre Fans, the Cavaliers are rolling. Virginia came out of Sunday afternoon’s win over Central Connecticut State with an eye-popping 13-1 record on the year. Victories include a 17-1 shellacking of Seton Hall at home, a 10-1 polishing of James Madison at home, 14-6 chop ‘n drop of Richmond on the road.
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O’Connor: Omaha is the Goal (UVa Baseball Preview)
February 19, 2004
To many of the players on the Virginia baseball team, Omaha, Nebraska is just another city on the U.S. map. To UVa’s new baseball coach Brian O’Connor, it is a familiar place and a place that he would like to frequently visit. Not as a tourist — as a coach.
For O’Connor, making it to Omaha and the College World Series is not a dream — it is a reality. O’Connor, who took over as the head coach of the baseball program at Virginia in July, knows what it takes to get to Omaha. He made it there as player at Creighton in 1991 and as an assistant coach at Notre Dame in 2002.
O’Connor enters his first season at Virginia with two goals in mind — to build a solid baseball program at UVa and to make a return trip to the College World Series in Omaha.
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Donte Minter: The Silent Assassin
December 1, 2003
Donte Minter will never be the most athletic player on the court. He’s not going to jump out of the gym or do eye-opening things with the ball. He doesn’t get a lot of touches in Virginia’s set offense and a casual fan might forget that he’s on the court. Yet he just finds a way to score, and the one place he does stand out is the stat sheet.
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UVa Baseball prepares for ACC Tourney
May 21, 2003
The Virginia baseball team begins ACC tournament action Wednesday, squaring off against fourteenth-ranked NC State at 8:30 in Salem, Virginia. The Cavaliers (28-23, 11-12 ACC) faced the Wolfpack (39-14, 15-9 ACC) three times this season, dropping two out of three during a late-April series in Charlottesville. A victory against State is imperative for Virginia’s hopes for an at-large bid in the upcoming NCAA regionals. What follows is a look back and a look ahead at a successful and wild season for the 2003 Cavaliers.
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For Cavs, a Familiar Result Against FSU
November 30, 1999
Walking around UVa Baseball Stadium on Friday night, it was obvious how much things have changed in Virginia’s baseball program. A team that used to draw a few dozen fans had a record crowd of 2,430 on hand for the opener of a three-game series with Florida State. There was a buzz, an electricity in the stadium that was the result of the team’s improbable success throughout the season.
Unfortunately, one thing did not change: The Seminoles still own the Cavaliers. The 8-0 rout was UVa’s seventh straight loss against FSU and 20th in their past 22 meetings.
Talk about buzzkill.
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