Didawick’s blast gives Virginia a sweep over the Hokies

By Jerry Ratcliffe

Brian O’Connor was wearing a Cheshire cat canary-chomping grin when he met with a small group of reporters after Virginia’s marathon, 13-inning, multi-come-from-behind, 10-9 victory over Virginia Tech late Saturday night.

The skipper had just watched his Cavaliers sweep the program’s chief rival after overcoming the largest deficit of the season to capture their 40th win for the 14th time in school history (13th under O’Connor).

Tech had bolted to a 7-0 lead before you could blink, requiring everything the Wahoos had in the tank to finally pull it out in the longest game in series history (time) with a five-hour, 10-minute win.

Sophomore Harrison Didawick hammered a two-run, walk-off home run in the bottom of the 13th, his 22nd roundtripper of the season, just one shy of Jake Gelof’s UVA single-season record set just last season. It was Didawick’s second home run in two nights off of Hokies’ southpaw reliever David Shoemaker.

Prior to Saturday, the Cavaliers’ biggest comeback this season had been from six runs down.

“We’ve proven it all year long, whether we’ve been down four runs, five runs or more, but we’ve shown the ability, that fight that our guys don’t give at-bats away no matter what happens, and it’s a great quality,” O’Connor said.

It was the 20th time this season that Virginia has come back to win.

“You just feel like you’re not out of any ballgame,” O’Connor said of his 18th-ranked team, which improved to 40-14 overall and 18-12 in the ACC.

With the win, Virginia secured the No. 4 seed in this week’s ACC Championship in Charlotte and will compete in Pool D with No. 5 seed Florida State and No. 9 seed Georgia Tech.

UVA will open play Wednesday at 11 a.m. against the Yellow Jackets (Virginia will be the away team) and will then face FSU on Friday, also at 11 a.m. Both games are at Truist Park in uptown Charlotte.

Against the Hokies, Virginia found itself trailing 7-0, then 8-7 and 9-8 in the top of the 13th before Didawick’s dramatic blast, the Cavaliers’ sixth walk-off triumph of the season.

A key part of the comeback was UVA’s ability to play longball. The Cavaliers, who have obliterated the program’s single-season home run record with 105 on the season, ripped 13 homers against Tech in the three-game series, including four on Saturday night. Other than Didawick’s clincher, none were any more important than the back-to-back blasts by freshman Henry Ford and Jacob Ference in UVA’s five-run seventh that tied the game at 7-all.

Ford smacked a three-run homer to left (his 17th of the season), followed by Ference’s solo roundtripper, also to left, on the very next pitch (also his 17th of the year), getting the majority of the 5,084 fans fired up during the third-longest game in Wahoo history.

“I’ve talked all year about this lineup … it’s just relentless,” O’Connor said. “There’s power throughout the lineup, everybody. We have a pretty good feeling going into postseason.”

Casey Saucke also joined the home run parade, hitting his 11th of the season. Ford went 4 for 6 at the plate, including 3 RBI, while Sauke was 3 for 5 with 4 RBI. Overall, Virginia pounded out 18 hits.

“The clutch pitching we got out of our bullpen … Jay Woolfolk (4 innings, 2 runs, 5 strikeouts) was outstanding, (Angelo) Tonas (2 innings, 1 hit), (Aiden) Reel (2.1 innings, 4 hits, 1 run), (Blake) Barker (1.2 innings, 1 hit, no runs), and for Chase Hungate to manage that inning to only be one run was huge because even if you fall behind a run in the final inning and you’re the home team, you get another at-bat, and anything can happen,” O’Connor said.

Hungate pitched the final two innings but only gave up one in the top of the 13th to the Hokies.

“You know it’s been a long time since we’ve swept the series in this season and our guys took the approach this weekend that it’s championship time and every game matters because it has to do with what you earn past the ACC Tournament, because it gives us a better seed,” O’Connor said. “To have 40 wins overall with only playing 54 games is really special and really hard to do in college baseball, and that shows the fight and grit that this team has.”