Brian O'Connor Explains Virginia's Decision to Pitch to Honeycutt in Loss to UNC

Matt Newton | Jun 30, 2024

Virginia baseball head coach at the College World Series in Omaha. / Virginia Athletics

While the lack of production from one of the best offenses in college baseball has to be the chief culprit in Virginia's 3-2 loss to North Carolina in the opening game of the College World Series on Friday afternoon in Omaha, there was a great deal of controversy surrounding UVA's decision to pitch to Vance Honeycutt in the bottom of the ninth before he delivered the walk-off single to win the game.

Honeycutt, widely considered one of the best players in college baseball, but certainly one of the clutchest, having already delivered a walk-off home run in this NCAA Tournament, came up to the plate with the game tied 2-2 in the bottom of the ninth with two outs and a runner on third. With first and second base unoccupied, Virginia had the option to intentionally walk Honeycutt, but would've then had to face Casey Cook, who was 3 for 4 on the day with an RBI and a run scored. Honeycutt, on the other hand, was 0 for 4 in the game up to that point.

The Cavaliers chose to pitch to Honeycutt and he turned on a 2-1 pitch from Chase Hungate and drove it into left field for the walk-off RBI single, handing Virginia a brutal loss to start the College World Series.

O'Connor was of course asked about the decision to pitch to Honeycutt in the postgame press conference. Here's what he said:

BRIAN O'CONNOR: It was the right match-up. I'll tell you, Cook, I think, is their best hitter in the lineup. So it wasn't an option for us to walk Honeycutt. Honeycutt's a great player. He has a lot of home runs. But I felt we had handled him really good all day.

And the guy on deck had had a terrific day. Actually when they played in Charlottesville, I actually intentionally walked Cook because I have so much respect for him as a hitter. I just think he has a really good balanced approach and hits the ball to all fields.

When Hungate was able to get the nine hole out, to pop up, there was no decision for me who to go to. Honeycutt is a fantastic player, one of the great players in this country. But that was the best match-up was to try to get him to hit a ball on the ground.

And unfortunately Hungate fell behind in the count and hung a slider there a little bit too much. And Honeycutt did a really nice job with it.

Read the full transcript from the postgame press conference with Brian O'Connor below:

Opening Statement

BRIAN O'CONNOR: I'll just start, great college baseball game. Evenly matched. They just did a little bit more of the little things than we did.

Really proud of Evan Blanco. I thought he pitched a terrific ball game. Cook had a great approach against him there to drive in their second run with two outs. And just really, really proud of Evan. You can see why we started him in the opener. He had a fantastic day and was ready to pitch, and managed some situations and gave us an opportunity to win.

Certainly North Carolina's pitching is good. They went to two of their best relievers, for sure. And we didn't make enough of an adjustment. I think we left 10 runners on base and just couldn't capitalize, runners on second and third, no outs, and only got one run to show for it on Griff O'Ferrall's fly ball to center field. Just couldn't get anything going to have a multiple-run inning.

I thought Henry Ford squared up some balls. Certainly the wind blowing in played a factor for both teams, not just for us. We're disappointed. We're frustrated because we just don't believe that we played a very good baseball game today -- not to take anything away from North Carolina. They pitched very, very well.

What I'm speaking of is just some little things, some missed signs. We're really good with dirt-ball reads at first base, and we missed three opportunities in the game today to get a runner to second base. Those are things we've done great all year long. And they just didn't show up today.

That's on me as the leader. My responsibility is to make sure that they're prepared for the fine details. I spoke about it in the opening press conference. At this time of the year it's the margins. Your margin for error is so small, and you've got to be on top of everything to win in Omaha.

We weren't today, but to North Carolina's credit, they were enough and won the ball game.

Q. Your offense was so prolific during the regular season. The numbers have dipped in postseason. Is that mainly a product of just facing better pitching, or are your hitters not doing some of the things...

BRIAN O'CONNOR: I think it's a combination of things. One, the pitching this time of the year is so good. I mean, everybody is, whether it's Regional, Super Regional or Omaha, the teams are there because they have good pitching. The teams that don't have good pitching, they're at home.

So naturally this time of the year, the runs are going to be harder to come by for sure. That happened to us last year here in Omaha. They weren't real high-scoring games, and most of the times here in Omaha they're low scoring games. And there's a combination of things.

That said, I just don't think that our approach in some situations -- early on in the game we took too many fastballs off DeCaro, and we're better than that. That's an identity of our offense.

Like I said, the dirt-ball reads, things like that that we need to be better at, we've been great all year. But mainly it's the pitching.

Hey, listen, North Carolina's got a great offense, too. They've got one of the top offenses in the country as well, and it was a low-scoring game. So I think everybody pretty much feels that way.

We just couldn't -- they walked a fair amount of our guys, or hit us. We got a lot of free 90s. We just couldn't get enough big, clutch hits with guys in scoring position. And again that's a credit to their level of pitching.

Q. After Evan got Honeycutt out in the seventh inning were you thinking the left-on-left match-up against Cook was the right one and Evan had earned that right to try to get out --

BRIAN O'CONNOR: 100 percent, there was no way I was not going to take Evan Blanco out of the game to face Cook. I know he had two hits off of him, but Evan Blanco is our guy. And he had earned that opportunity.

And a great hitter in Cook. He put a good swing on the on the ball. Evan, I'll have to go back and watch the pitch -- I'm not sure if he executed it or not; but that's neither here nor there.

It was absolutely the right match-up. And our plan, no matter what happened, was to go to Hungate the next batter.

Q. Harrison Didawick comes out of the game. Is he injured at all? He's thrown like that a little bit all year. Is there anything wrong with him or his arm?

BRIAN O'CONNOR: No, there's not. I'll certainly see what's going on with him. That was just a defense decision on my part. We just can't -- again, that throw puts another guy in scoring position. It didn't end up costing us the game because we managed it.

But he's better than that and he knows that. And so it was a situation that I needed to do.

As the visiting team, you all know that I did the same thing up in Boston this year as well, as the visiting team. The home team's a little bit different. And it's just one of those situations that we needed to make that move.

Q. How do you feel about going into Sunday with the amount of depth you have in your bullpen now and playing North Carolina back in April, taking them two out of three, what's the sequence of what you saw in April until today?

BRIAN O'CONNOR: I don't think what I saw in April has much to do with today because we both played a lot of ball games.

That weekend series in Charlottesville was very much a high-scoring series. There was a lot of offense in entire series. We were fortunate to be really offensive that weekend, and we had a great game against DeCaro and didn't today. And he battled. Pence is outstanding at the end of the game, but in my opinion, DeCaro won that game. I know he only went four innings, but for him to manage some of those situations where he was walking us or hitting us and not allow a big hit to break it open was huge. We just couldn't get a crooked number.

And the pitching, yeah, sure, we only used two guys this time of the year -- in today's ball game. In Omaha, it's so different because you don't play tomorrow. And guys get a chance to get rejuvenated and things like that. It's going to be important -- whoever we play on Sunday, it's going to be important that we get off to a good start.

But again it's us getting locked into what we do and be more opportunistic. We were not opportunistic today. We had a lot of opportunities with multiple runners in scoring position and just couldn't get a big hit.

A lot of them were fly balls that would have been fly balls on any day, other than a couple that Henry Ford hit. I thought he squared him up. I thought he drove the baseball and it just died and didn't reward him.

But on a day like today, like Griff said, you have to make an adjustment as an offensive ballclub and it's got to be more line drives.

Anything in the air just isn't -- you're not going to hit it over anybody's head. And we just didn't make that adjustment, and we need to work on that tomorrow at practice and make that adjustment and be ready to go on Sunday.

Q. You guys played a really strong baseball game today, but like you said, sometimes little things don't go your way. What's the message to your guys going forward on the brink of elimination?

BRIAN O'CONNOR: Be better. Be better, period. End of story. Unacceptable. That's not Virginia baseball.

Again, not going to take anything away from North Carolina. They've got a great club and they got the big hits and they pitched really great, okay?

But what I'm talking about is the small details. Every coach sits up here and talks about it this time of the year. They did it and we didn't. So, period, end of story. We have to be better. And if we're better, then we'll have an opportunity to win and potentially move forward.

Our last three ball games here in Omaha last year and this year and every year is different, we've lost by one run and they've been very low-scoring games. The message is be better.

And I know what these kids are made of. They've bounced back all year long, and I know that they'll be better on Sunday.