O’Connor’s experience in Omaha comforting to a team that has never been there

By Jerry Ratcliffe

There’s something about having been to Omaha before that’s comforting for Brian O’Connor and some of his coaching staff.

O’Connor, who has directed Virginia to five College World Series appearances during his 18-year career, knows exactly how to handle a team that hasn’t been there before.

On the Cavaliers first day in Omaha, their first visit to the spacious Ameritrade Park, and after getting a good look at where they’ll take on Tennessee on Sunday afternoon, O’Connor got down to business.

“They had a chance to go in the stadium for an hour, to take BP, see live balls off the bat,” the UVA coach said.

Then O’Connor purposely conducted a drill where the outfielders were throwing to bases and immediately somebody was not in the right place as a relay man. Why was that important?

O’Connor told his team that he needed them to be focused and locked in.

“It gave me an opportunity to talk to them, which I did, about focus, that the game is still played between these white lines,” O’Connor said. “All the noise, the vastness of the stadium, the magnitude of the event, which is like nothing they’ve ever experienced before, that is what it is and you’ve got to manage and handle it. But when we talk about the competition between the white lines the game is the same.”

Zack Gelof, who has been a key ingredient in helping Virginia get to Omaha, was thankful that he has a coaching staff with so much experience in the College World Series (the last time UVA was in Omaha, in 2015, they won the national championship).

“Coach has said a good amount to us,” Gelof said. “Obviously 2015, winning it all. But it just comes down to the little things. Everyone here is good, and we all deserve to be here, but at the end of the day, it’s just going to be who executes the most, and that will be the winner.”

O’Connor thinks that his team, which has been on the road since late in the regular season, which ended in a series at Boston College, followed by the ACC tournament in Charlotte, and the NCAA regional and Super Regional in Columbia, S.C., has helped his team become accustomed to playing away from Charlottesville.

“I think there’s something to it,” O’Connor said. “We’ve taken different paths to get here in Omaha our previous four trips _ twice through Charlottesville and twice through other venues.

“They’re all special, but there’s something to getting out of your comfort zone and winning it on the road, which we did the last two weeks. We’ve lived out of a suitcase the last four weeks. So our guys are used to it. They’re trained that way.”

Virginia has had a consistent routine for what time it gets up in the morning, what time breakfast is scheduled, what time coaches expect the players in their rooms, a solid, month-long routine.

“I believe in routines,” O’Connor said. “I think it’s really important for a high-level, elite performance. Our guys are used to it.”

(NOTE: for a complete scouting report on Tennessee, listen to our podcast with LSU coach Paul Mainieri, who is Brian O’Connor’s mentor, as whose Tigers played Tennessee five times during the season. Mainieri, who just retired after 14 years at LSU, then previously Notre Dame, has been one of O’Connor’s two mentors since the UVA coach was 23 years old. Listen to his inside comments on O’Connor at JerryRatcliffe.com