Virginia has to hope this is rock bottom.
The Cavaliers, who have reached the College World Series in three of the last four years and were ranked No. 2 this preseason, likely won’t be in the Top 25 any longer come Monday after Duke polished off a sweep of the No. 23 Hoos with a 13-6 win over UVa on Sunday at Disharoon Park.
“We need to get back to what we did during those great times and do what we did during those great times,” Cavaliers center fielder Aidan Teel said bluntly.
“We are a winning ball club and we’ve got to figure out how to get back to that,” he continued, “and how to get out of this rough patch. Rough patches don’t last with great teams and I really believe the guys to my left and right are all great.”
Virginia’s Aidan Teel batting in the University of Virginia vs. Boston College Baseball game at Disharoon Park on Friday, March 7, 2025.
It was the fourth straight loss for UVa, which went winless this week and dropped to 12-10 overall and 3-6 in ACC play. The Cavaliers have lost both of the ACC series played in their home venue this season.
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A seventh-inning implosion doomed the Hoos on Sunday and sent them to their first four-game skid since 2022. Duke scored six runs in the frame to turn what was a close contest into another laugher.
The Blue Devils outscored the Cavaliers 35-13 in the three-game set, and earned a mercy-rule win over the Hoos in Saturday’s tilt.
And UVa was forced to play from behind from the start on Sunday.
Usually-dependable top starter Evan Blanco wasn’t at his best for the Cavaliers, allowing three hits, two walks and five runs including three earned runs while failing to pitch out of the third inning.
“It comes down to getting my execution back to where it was at the end of last season,” said Blanco, who missed the first two weekends of the campaign after suffering a setback during the preseason in his build up toward the start of the year.
He said he feels healthy, “but I still have a long way to go and I definitely showed that today.”
By the end of Blanco’s outing, the Hoos trailed 5-2. They allowed another run in the fourth, but reliever Matt Lanzendorfer gave them time to cut into Duke’s lead.
Lanzendorder, a graduate transfer left-hander, struck out four over 2.2 scoreless innings.
UVa tallied two runs in the fifth with one on Henry Ford’s RBI single and another on Chris Arroyo’s sacrifice fly. Arroyo drove in another run on an infield single in the home sixth to pull the Cavaliers within 6-5 of the Blue Devils.
The score didn’t stay tight for long, though.
Duke batted around in the seventh and broke the bout open on Wallace Clark’s three-run double. He was on base five times on Sunday. Ben Miller, who was 3-for-5 in Duke’s victory, added his second run-scoring double during the seventh. His first came against Blanco in the second inning.
That seventh inning began to teeter when reliever Jack O’Connor walked Noah Murray after Ben Rounds doubled to open the seventh. Then, AJ Gracia attempted a sacrifice bunt, and he ended up reaching first base when O’Connor threw wild while trying to get Gracia out at first.
O’Connor was charged with all six runs over his third of an inning of work.
He didn’t allow any runs through his first three outings after returning from the lat injury that forced him to miss the last three months of last season.
“But this game can humble you in a hurry,” longtime Cavaliers coach Brian O’Connor said, “and we’ve just got to stay at it, stay positive and stay poised.”
Teel said O’Connor has held himself accountable through the squad’s recent struggles, and simply that players need to be better.
“Every facet of the game [needs to change] right now,” Teel said. “Defense needs to better. Offense needs to be better. Pitching in clutch situations, hitting in clutch situations need to be better. We need to make those pitches and get those big hits, myself included.”
O’Connor said he senses his players are pressing a bit to get the team turned in the right direction.
“There were huge expectations on this team,” O’Connor said, “and huge expectations on individuals as well, and everybody to a man as an individual, no one can help you with that. You have to process that and understand how you’re going to handle it, so it’s a growth opportunity.”
O’Connor isn’t hitting the panic button, though. He said he can draw from the 2021 season in which UVa was 9-10 overall and 3-9 in the ACC through its first 19 games, but ended up playing well as the year went along to get to the postseason and make a run to Omaha.
Teel’s older brother, Kyle Teel, was a key cog for the 2021 bunch and Aidan said he’s learned from that, too.
“He stayed positive through the tough times,” Aidan Teel said. “He understood they weren’t going to last because they had so many older guys and so many guys that have gone through and understand what college baseball was like.
“When we come out here, it’s a dogfight from pitch one,” Teel added. “And right now, we aren’t throwing the punches. We’re getting punched in the face and taking it right now. We need to be better at being aggressive and being the aggressor and that’s what changed for that 2021 team. Instead of letting themselves get punched in the face, they punched first and they punched back. That’s what we can take from that team and start doing right now.”
