Cavaliers’ roller-coaster season ends

By Jay Jenkins

Published: June 4, 2008

Given the enormity of games played in baseball, picking a season-defining moment is near impossible.
During a campaign that featured freshmen-fueled walk-off wins, the program’s best-ever start and unimaginable setback scenarios, it only becomes tougher to place Virginia’s 2008 season under the magnifying glass.
Pat McAnaney would beg to
differ.
Just days before he was one of 100 players named for the Brooks Wallace Award, McAnaney’s final pitch at Miami served as that critical flash-before-your-eyes moment.
En route to a 1-0 loss to the nation’s top-ranked team, McAnaney twisted his knee awkwardly and limped from the diamond in agonizing pain.
The winless month that followed for McAnaney humbled the southpaw, forcing the senior to soul search as a promising campaign crawled to a halt in the Fullerton regional Monday, leaving Virginia with a 39-23 final mark in the process.
“I hate to make excuses but when I tweaked the knee on that last pitch at Miami, that just set me off for a couple of days there and for whatever reason, I was never able to get it back, and it is a really tough pill to swallow, because I felt like there were a couple of games where the offense put across some runs and had I done a better job, it could have been a story,” McAnaney said. “It was definitely an up-and-down year from a team standpoint, just waiting to put it all together and unfortunately in my situation, I picked the most important time of the year for me to fall into a slump.
“It was a pretty brutal way to finish out my season and my career.”
Virginia coach Brian O’Connor looked at it differently, pointing out that McAnaney’s success when other teammates struggled mightily made the postseason a reality.
“Pat McAnaney is a huge reason why we were playing at the end of the year because of what he did for us on the mound all year long,” the skipper said. “The disappointing thing is that his record does not indicate that, but some of those wins are in the win column in the bullpen.
“He stepped up big time for this team and there is an example of somebody who came back for their senior year and not only had a great year and can feel good about leaving his college program, but I think he bettered his opportunity at the next level.
“Most importantly, he is now going out of college baseball with a lot of confidence.”
McAnaney, who finished 4-6 with a 3.86 ERA, was just one example of the roller coaster ride of a season the Cavaliers experienced during their fifth straight appearance in the NCAA tournament.
For the season, the power-deprived offense registered a .290 batting average, eighth-best in the ACC, and the pitching staff posted a 3.83 ERA and pounded out 551 strikeouts, a figure bettered thus far by only North Carolina.
“This whole year was one of those years where we had a hard time clicking on all cylinders in the regular season,” McAnaney said. “The pitchers had their moments and the hitters had their moments and we could never put it all together.
“I thought that might happen in the postseason, but unfortunately we never did it.”
While outsiders have harped on the program’s inability to overcome the regional hurdle, the Cavaliers have company. Only three programs ranked in the top 10 in preseason poll (Arizona, Miami and UNC) are still alive and two-time defending champion Oregon State and ACC powerhouse Clemson failed to earn an at-large invitations into the postseason.
“The list goes on and on,” O’Connor said. “We have high expectations in our program and we always will as coaches and players, but what is important is that you keep things in perspective and understand how hard it is to win college baseball games and get in that final 16 that are playing this weekend in a super regional.
“There are many, many great programs in this country that don’t get there year in and year out. We just continue to recruit good players and continue to grind it out until it happens for us.”
The highlight of the season beyond the 11-0 start included the magical run in the ACC tournament. Victories over Florida State and UNC secured a berth in the event’s title game. 
“Maybe that was who we were. Maybe that was our best baseball. I don’t know,” O’Connor said. “Maybe our best baseball was the first two games at the ACC tournament. We were just never able to put it together for a long period of time.
“Overall as a team, we never sustained it for a whole weekend or a whole week of playing good baseball, and maybe that is attributed to youth, but we have a lot to be proud of to play in the ACC championship game, to play in an NCAA regional and to have 39 wins in the toughest conference in the country.
“That is a lot to be proud and I don’t want our team judged on whether we make it to a super regional because there are only 16 teams in the country that make it to that point every year.”
Content and excited having raised the program’s so-called bar, Virginia appears a fixture on the national stage and a potential contender for the ACC title in 2009 at Boston’s Fenway Park.
The method for reaching that plateau for the first time since 1996 could be answered Thursday and Friday during Major League Baseball’s First-Year Player Draft.
The Cavaliers have several draft-eligible players with signing leverage and a year of eligibility remaining, including pitcher Jacob Thompson, second baseman David Adams, first baseman Jeremy Farrell and shortstop Greg Miclat.
“Every player individually has to access the value of him coming out after his junior year, and it is different for everybody,” O’Connor said. “The professional draft is geared towards guys signing after their junior year, but it has to make sense for them to do that and everybody comes about that decision differently.
“I respect each and every one of them with how they handle it. Some of them don’t want to pass up their final year of college baseball cheaply and some of them put a higher value on it than others.”
Numerous members of the incoming recruiting class may also be targeted, courted and eventually drafted by MLB teams.
“These kids have a tough decision to make and it is a great opportunity for them either way,” the coach said. “But for us to maintain our program at a high level, those are the players that we need to recruit and have recruited.
“They have tough decisions and it makes it a long summer as the college coach.”