Virginia Basketball’s players top the coaches in softball for the sixth straight season

For the sixth straight season, the Virginia Basketball player squad took down the coaches in their annual softball game. This year, Ty Jerome led the way for the players and earned the title of MVP after smacking four (FOUR!!!) home runs and 11 RBI in the slim 15-14 win.

The Coaches, clad in basketball jerseys of teams past (Coach Bennett rocked a No. 11 Evan Nolte jersey), started off slowly as they fell behind 2-0 in the first inning. The Players extended their lead to 5-0 in the third inning before the coaching staff finally got some offense and knotted things up at five in the top of the fourth. In the fifth, the Coaches took their first lead of the game at 7-5, but a four-run bottom half of the inning gave the lead right back to the young guns.

After falling behind 11-9, the Players used a huge six-run bottom of the sixth to go ahead 15-11. The Coaches put three runs on the board in the top of the seventh, but the Players held off their late rally to secure the victory and the streak.

As one can expect in a Virginia Basketball related endeavor, there were some defensive highlights. Austin Katstra made a diving catch in the outfield reminiscent of Jackie Bradley Jr and Erich Bacher, the Sports Information Director, robbed Kyle Guy of an extra base hit. The Players can’t be pleased with their five errors in the game.

Jack Salt hit the longest home run of the day (shockingly), sending one over the center field wall and probably all the way to JPJ. His home run was part of an extremely efficient offense (shockingly) that scored 15 runs on 14 hits.

As a result of the game, it appears that we’ve finally found something that De’Andre Hunter isn’t good at: softball. In the clip posted by VirginiaSportsTV, he whiffed terribly at the plate and wasn’t much better in the outfield. That’s ok, no gloves are needed for this:

Check out the full highlights here (narrated by the incomparable Coach Williford):

After the game, Dave Koehn caught up with the MVP, who mentioned that they lost their MVP from last season in Isaiah Wilkins.

Virginia’s season starts on November 6 as the Hoos welcome Towson to John Paul Jones Arena.