Cavs draw 2 familiar foes

By: Jay Jenkins | Daily Progress
Published: June 01, 2010

Apparently, the love is not gone. In fact, it will make an appearance at Davenport Field.

A year after Virginia’s players watched fans from Mississippi pump their hands in the air to the song from a French singer, the Cavaliers landed that same team in their regional.

Virginia (47-11), given the No. 5 national seed, will also welcome St. John’s (40-18) and Virginia Commonwealth (37-17-1).

But the biggest threat comes from Ole Miss (38-22), a team that Virginia upended on the road by winning the final two games of the super regional.

“To watch a crowd of over 10,000 bouncing during the ‘Love Is Gone’ song was amazing,” said Virginia catcher Franco Valdes. “It was nuts. Now, they get to experience baseball here and experience what this fan base can be like.

“It is going to be awesome to have Ole Miss here and see what our fans can do.”

Virginia must take care of its own business — the Cavaliers need to take down VCU on Friday at 4 p.m. to stay in the winner’s bracket.

“It should make for an

interesting game with a pair of teams from the Commonwealth,” said Virginia coach Brian O’Connor. “That says a lot about the level of baseball in this state.”

Virginia’s fourth-ever regional at Davenport Field comes with a great distinction as the Cavaliers were named the No. 5 national seed.

That seemed a shot at the program after finishing the year ranked No. 1, boasting a top-2 RPI and having a head-to-head win over Coastal Carolina, which landed the No. 4 national seed.

Virginia went 13-5 against top 25 teams, while the Chanticleers went just 2-1 against such foes.

“At this point things are decided on the field,” said Tim Weiser, chairman of the tournament selection committee, in an online chat. “It’s not to say we don’t care about where teams are as national seeds. But the more important topics are who will be the No. 2 or No. 3 seeds in regionals and who will be the final at-large teams. I don’t recall any of us having disagreements about the way the top few national seeds were ranked. I guess we’ll find out if we were right or wrong in the order we had them in, but 70 percent of the vote on national seeds went that way.”

O’Connor is focused on just one game for now.

“We are going to play a VCU team Friday that earned the right to be here and we are going to put our best into trying to win Friday’s game and that’s all I am concerned about.”

A blessing of sorts came Virginia’s way as Ole Miss announced that ace Drew Pomeranz (8-2, 2.21 ERA) would start at 8 p.m. Friday against St. John’s.

“He was great last year against us,” Virginia junior Phil Gosselin. “He was one of the best pitchers that we have seen.”

Or would have seen.