I’ll tell you what, getting used to winning all the time makes the losses that much more painful. The Virginia Cavaliers dropped a heartbreaker at the hands of their rival North Carolina in the first game of the 2024 College World Series.
The major storylines were much of the same as the rest of the postseason.
Virginia starter Evan Blanco pitched extremely well, working 6.2 innings with two earned runs, seven hits, two walks, and striking out four. Chase Hungate was solid in relief as well.
The powerful lineup was effective at times but not at their peak form and not 100% opportunistic. In total the Cavaliers mustered just two runs on five hits and five walks. While this will typically not cut it, we have to consider that they were not consistently facing this type of pitching throughout the year.
Like I said, UVA was hitting well below season average in general this tournament, and still winning. The difference in this game was that they did not quite come through in situational moments.
The elephant in the room was Brian O’Connor’s decision to have Hungate pitch to the phenom Vance Honeycutt. In a tie game in the bottom of the ninth with two outs and a runner on third, the top of the Tar Heels order was coming up. Lead-off hitter Honeycutt laced a 2-1 pitch into left field to walk it off.
“It wasn’t an option for us to walk Honeycutt.”
UVA coach Brian O’Connor says they felt facing Vance Honeycutt was the best matchup with Chase Hungate.
Calls Casey Cook the best hitter in the UNC lineup and even called back to a time UVA walked Cook earlier this season. pic.twitter.com/PhrnJDEsLm
— Preston Willett (@PrestonWillett) June 14, 2024
Of course, hindsight is 20-20, so the folks saying O’Connor should have issued a free pass seem to be right. However, it is not quite that simple. It would have been extremely difficult to induce another out with Casey Cook – who is a slugger with equal numbers to Honeycutt, a favorable lefty-righty matchup, and who was seeing the ball much better that game – followed by the heart of the order looming behind him.
My initial reaction was that, after falling behind 2-0 in the count, UVA should utilize one of their two empty bases so they would not have to give into a hitters count. After further evaluation, Honeycutt is more susceptible to the swing and miss than the guys behind him, so they could have tried to get him to chase. If the get-me-over slider was the pitch call, that is a poor decision.
On the other hand, there is a possibility Hungate simply missed his spot and you have to live with that. After all, you can’t walk both Honeycutt and Cook because that puts too much pressure to attack three-hitter Parks Harbor.
Another factor was the actual pitcher Oak decided to roll with. Hungate is your pitch-to-contact guy whereas Matt Augustin, who has more overpowering stuff, was waiting in the bullpen. If the goal was to induce a strikeout, Augustin seems like the move.
Then again, the true freshman is also prone to occasionally miss spots badly, and one wild pitch would also have ended the game. In essence, O’Connor chose from a group of imperfect options and it unfortunately did not work out.
The ‘Hoos now have a long road to climb through the losers bracket. It starts with a Sunday afternoon affair with the loser of Florida State and Tennessee. 2:00 PM Eastern is the scheduled start time.