The Cavalier baseball team are set to take on the Golden Eagles of Boston College this weekend in their ACC home opener. UVa returns to their ACC slate after taking on inter-state foes of William and Mary on Tuesday and they celebrated St. Patricks Day at JMU.
On Tuesday, the Cavs hosted the Tribe and completed the sweep of their two game season series. The Hoos won the game 9-1 behind solid pitching performances by 2nd years Will Roberts and Chad O'Connor. Will had probably the best start of his young UVA career by going 6 strong innings, striking out 8, and only gave up 1 earned run on 4 hits.The offensive side was a team effort as the Hoos got 14 hits with John Barr, Dan Grovatt, John Hicks, and Tyler Cannon all having multi-hit games.
On Wednesday, the Hoos traveled to Harrisonburg to take on JMU. The Dukes kept it close but couldn't keep up with the power of the #1 ranked team in the nation. 1st year Branden Kline got his 2nd start of the year and his first win of his Wahoo career. Kline went a full 5 innings and only gave up 2 runs on 2 hits. Neal Davis, Whit Mayberry, and Tyler Wilson all picked up innings to bridge the gap to Kevin Arico who came in to get his 6th save of this season.Offensively the Hoos didnt need to hit much as they were walked 14 times in the game. However, John Hicks, Kenny Swab(another HR), and Tyler Cannon all had multi-hit games again.
This weekend they host BC. Don't be fooled by BC's 7-9 record, they are pretty good. You have to feel bad for the eagles as they HAVEN'T EVEN PLAYED A HOME GAME YET! On the bump the eagles are lead by Pat Dean. Dean has started in 4 games and won three of them which accounts for nearly half of the Eagles wins. His 3-0 record give him an ERA of 2.9 which isn't too shabby. On the opposite end of the spectrum is BC starter Mike Dennhardt who is 1-2 with a 10.91 ERA....yowza. Just found out Dean might not even be pitching so just keep the Dean stats in the back of your head. Offensively, the Eagles have Robbie Anston who has blitzed opponent pitching for a .397 BA with 22 runs scored.
BC was expected to struggle but be a bit better than they have shown so far. Coming off of their NCAA regional appearance at Austin where they had the longest game in the history of mankind against The University of Texas. Unfortunately, they came up a bit short and were ousted of the regional a bit later. Replacing the offensive juggernaut that was Big Tony Sanchez(say it with an Italian Mafia accent) has been a bit tough for Boston College.
I think I said earlier in the year that they would take one game from the Cavs but we would take the series. I would like to(if you will allow me) to rethink my prediction and make it a full sweep for UVa. I know that our starting weekend pitching has been a bit suspect outside of Danny Hultzen but I think our bats go crazy this weekend in the warm weather and feast on sub-par BC pitching and we SWEEP the whole thing. Also, Saturday's game will be broadcast on CSN for everyone's enjoyment(if you can take yourself away from basketball; it might even be hard for me too). Enjoy the weekend and WAHOOWA