Reports: O’Connor clear-cut favorite for Mississippi State job; What has changed?

By Jerry Ratcliffe

Photo by Nikolozi Khutsishvili

According to numerous reports, Virginia’s Brian O’Connor is the leading candidate to take over the Mississippi State baseball program, one of the top jobs in all of college baseball.

This is an about face from when rumors tying the longtime UVA coach to the MSU vacancy first surfaced.

On May 6, O’Connor addressed those rumors with this reporter, saying: “This happens every darn year. Someone in the SEC fires their coach and immediately, I’m the top target. It doesn’t mean anything and has no substance.”

However, reports have emerged that the 54-year-old O’Connor, a three-time National Coach of the Year, has grown frustrated over some issues with UVA’s athletic department policies concerning his program.

Kendall Rogers of D1 Baseball, who is very well plugged into the college baseball scene, was the first to report Thursday that, “O’Connor has emerged as the clear-cut frontrunner to be the next head coach at Mississippi State.”

Not long afterward, the Clarion-Ledger newspaper in Mississippi confirmed Rogers’ report. Mississippi State is searching for the replacement of Chris Lemons, who was fired in late April for “inconsistency,” after leading the school to a national championship in 2021.

The Bulldogs (34-21) are being led by an interim coach as they compete in the NCAA Tallahassee Regional this weekend.

O’Connor is considered one of the nation’s top coaches and several SEC schools have made runs at him in the past, notably Florida, LSU and Texas A&M. However, after signing an extension last year with a contract that runs through 2031, the veteran coach has grown frustrated, according to sources close to him.

Apparently one sticking point, sources say, is the NCAA’s rule adopted for 2025-26 concerning funding for full scholarships in the sport of baseball.

The new rules “significantly alter scholarship and roster limits.” Division I baseball programs may now offer full scholarships to as many as 34 players (the new roster limit, trimmed from 40). Under the old rules, baseball could only offer 11.7 scholarships, which forced coaches to hand out partial scholarships to some of their players.

Some coaches have complained because the sport’s largest-budgeted athletic departments can ensure that others can’t compete with them.

“They are pulling up the drawbridge and leaving everyone else outside the moat,” one coach complained.

Some programs leave it up for the coach to raise the extra scholarship money for the jump from 11.7 to 34, which requires raising an additional $1 million to $1.2 million per year, every year.

We have reached out to the Virginia athletic department and requested what AD Carla Williams plans in terms of funding the 34 scholarships, but haven’t yet received a response.

Sources close to the program said that O’Connor was told not to expect more than 20 scholarships to be funded.

That is a major problem because schools with larger budgets or simply more money can easily fund 34, leaving schools that can’t afford to fully fund the limit unable to compete, certainly on the national level, which Virginia has become accustomed to. O’Connor has led the Cavaliers to 18 NCAA Tournaments since 2004, seven appearances in the College World Series (including 3 of the previous 4 seasons) and the national championship.

Another issue, which clearly has agitated the UVA coach, is the inability to travel outside a restricted area for midweek games. O’Connor complained Tuesday that his team is geographically locked into playing midweek road games within a couple of hours of Charlottesville, which limits his nonconference schedule, which in turn impacted Virginia’s RPI this past season. The NCAA selection committee pointed out UVA’s nonconference schedule as one of the reasons the Cavaliers were omitted from this year’s tournament, which included nine ACC teams, three that finished below Virginia in the regular-season standings.

A source said that O’Connor has unsuccessfully politicked for the ability to expand the distance of nonconference road trips for the past three years.

Ironically, Mississippi State was eliminated from the 2024 NCAA tournament by Virginia, perhaps leaving a strong impression on the Bulldogs’ athletic department. O’Connor’s buyout is $500,000.

Mississippi State is viewed as one of the crown jewels of college baseball jobs with spectacular facilities, including Dudy Noble Field, a strong NIL program and a passionate fan base. The Bulldogs held the top 10 attendance records in NCAA baseball history from 1988 to 2023, including an NCAA record of 16,423 vs. Ole Miss. No other schools have had more than 14,000 attendance on that list.

O’Connor: Heartbroken, takes ownership, addresses issues with scheduling

By Jerry Ratcliffe

Photo by Nikolozi Khutsishvili

Virginia’s watch party for the NCAA baseball tournament selection show started out hopeful for the Cavaliers but turned glum when the team learned its fate on Monday. UVA wasn’t included in the 64-team field, a rare fate for a Brian O’Connor team (18 invites since 2004).

The longtime Wahoos skipper didn’t like the end result but accepted the outcome, making no excuses. Still, he felt the sorrow of his team.

“Heartbroken, right?” O’Connor said. “When you pour everything into what you do and it doesn’t happen …” He didn’t finish his thought. Didn’t need to. The team was devastated that it couldn’t continue UVA’s postseason tradition, even though it finished the campaign hot, winning 12 of its last 15 games.

“They knew they were on the bubble. They knew this could happen,” O’Connor said. “But they believed, they had hope.”

Virginia was convinced enough that it would make the field that the team practiced all weekend leading up to Monday’s selection show. Then came the cold slap of reality, with a low RPI, low strength of schedule and too many losses to mid-major teams.

“We prepared like we were in the tournament and they were heartbroken, and they should be,” the coach said. “I wanted them to watch the [selection] show, whether we got in or not. If we didn’t get in, I wanted them to know what it felt like, and that feeling carries over.”

O’Connor said his heart ached for his players, but that being snubbed was a lesson that you get what you earn in life.

“Sometimes in this sport, at the highest level, it comes down to a game or two, whether you earn the opportunity or not,” O’Connor said. “It comes down to a game or a pitch or a play when you do get the opportunity. The margins are very small to get into the NCAA Tournament when you put yourself in the position that we did, and that’s what happened.”

The coach pointed out he was proud of the way his team responded on the back half of the schedule, winning 20 of its last 26 games, beating ACC regular-season champion Georgia Tech on the road, sweeping Miami, taking a road series against rival Virginia Tech. O’Connor said despite being left out of the NCAAs, it didn’t diminish how the team rallied to put itself in position for a possible bid.

“Unfortunately, it just wasn’t enough in the first half,” O’Connor said. “A few games cost us the opportunity. That’s what it came down to. I’ve never been one to profess how we should have been in or analyze it. What I analyzed is what we did OK and the situation that we put ourselves in.

“As the leader of this program, I own that. It’s my responsibility. The players play the game. I manage the season and the emotions and ups and downs of it all. So as the leader of the program, I own it that we didn’t get into the NCAA Tournament. I’m not going to make any excuses. Sometimes it comes down to a game or two.”

O’Connor pointed out to his team following the selection show that Virginia’s program has been called more times than it hasn’t, and wanted everyone involved to keep things in perspective about this one season falling a little short. The program has been to the College World Series three times in the previous four years.

“I think sometimes people want to think, ‘Well, what’s going on? Did we take a step back?’” the coach said.

“It’s a tough business and I don’t shy away from it. I love being challenged at the highest level and being held to a standard of success.”

The coach said it was easy for critics to say it came down to a sloppy loss to Boston College in the ACC Tournament opener, that if the Cavaliers had won that game, things would have turned out differently.

“That’s too much to put on a group of young men,” O’Connor said. “We play a lot of games. I remind the guys throughout the season, that ‘Hey, this game in front of us, this midweek game, you don’t know which one it’ll be that gets you in [the NCAAs] or doesn’t get you in, and we just didn’t do that consistently enough. And I own that as the leader of the program.”

The NCAA selection committee pointed out several midweek losses as a sticking point, as well as having not played some of the ACC’s elite programs during the season, which impacted UVA’s RPI and strength-of-schedule ranking. O’Connor explained those situations to add clarity.

When the ACC schedule came out, he was somewhat concerned that some of the top teams in the league were missing from UVA’s slate, due to the conference rotation of 18 teams.

“I thought about it, that those are some of the traditional powers,” O’Connor said. “I’m sure those schools looked at the schedule and said, geez, we don’t have Virginia on our schedule, but that’s the way these big conferences are now.

“It rotates every year and you really don’t know until the games start to be played who is going to be really good. I mean, Louisville the last two seasons was not in the NCAA Tournament.”

He pointed out that most prognosticators felt Stanford was going to have an awesome year, potentially a team that would finish in Omaha.

Virginia went 16-11 in the ACC, and what bewildered O’Connor was that most every year that any league team has finished with that kind of record, they made it to the NCAAs. The coach was right. This was the first time since 1994 that a team finished five games above .500 in the ACC and was left out of the NCAAs.

“Well this year it didn’t because of some of our midweek losses. Historically, at least over the last three years or so, we have dominated outside of the conference. We didn’t dominate this year. We had some flaws.”

O’Connor believed that if his team had won two or more of those nonconference games, maybe one more ACC game, there wouldn’t have been a conversation about Virginia being snubbed.

The committee also pointed out UVA’s strength of schedule (No. 257 in the country), impacted by the absence of some of the ACC’s upper-echelon teams, and because some of the nonconference teams that typically field strong programs with good RPI had down years.

“The challenge with the nonconference schedule is that those games are scheduled three years out,” O’Connor explained. “You look at the teams that we played twice in the middle of the week, right in our own state, and you look at what their RPI was inside 80 or 75, and they were well below 200 this year.”

For example, Virginia’s 2026 schedule is already 98-percent complete.

He pointed out that he wanted this year’s team to be challenged right out of the gate and scheduled two opening-season tournaments in Puerto Rico and Texas against teams like Oregon State, Oklahoma and Michigan to test his players early. Still, when he agreed to play in those events, he really didn’t know what other teams were in the field until the brackets came out.

O’Connor has always played a lot of in-state teams in the nonconference portion of the schedule, which usually is a positive, but is somewhat limited with midweek opponents because of an inability to travel far for those games.

“We’re geographically challenged a little,” he said. “We can’t get on a bus in the middle of the week and drive somewhere for six hours to play. They’re students, too.”

O’Connor is aware of critics who suggest Virginia should play more SEC opponents in the middle of the week.

“How do you do that?” he questioned. “Clemson can play Georgia (and South Carolina) because they are in close proximity. The schools in our league that are farther south can do that. That said, over two decades, our scheduling model has worked. It has allowed us to be top-eight national seeds, it’s allowed us to host regionals and super regionals. It didn’t this year because we didn’t take care of what we traditionally take care of.”

O’Connor plans to examine the schedule for the future (although it’s too late to address the 2026 slate) and if changes need to be made, especially early in future schedules, he’ll address those needs.

COMING LATER: O’Connor analyzes his program’s pitching, who’s coming back, who’s going in the draft and how his roster will be impacted by the upcoming Settlement, along with if ACC coaches are concerned about keeping up with the rival SEC.

Virginia gets screwed by NCAA selection committee

By Jerry Ratcliffe

Photo: UVA Athletics

Having a hard time digesting the NCAA Baseball selection committee’s decision to leave Virginia out of its 64-team field, considering what the Cavaliers accomplished.

UVA had some hiccups along the way, but figured out its issues and got itself together, turning around a season that once stood at 12-11 and finished 32-18, with the Cavaliers winning 12 of their last 14. During that span, the Wahoos won a series at Georgia Tech, swept Miami and took a road series at Virginia Tech.

Virginia finished in sixth place in the ACC regular-season standings, only a game-and-a-half behind first place Georgia Tech, yet ahead of Miami (15-14) and Louisville (15-15). In addition, the Cavaliers were robbed of an opportunity against second-place finisher Florida State, with all three of those games being cancelled due to the tragic shooting on the Tallahassee campus the week those games were scheduled.

Nine ACC teams were selected to the field, but Virginia was omitted with the excuse that the Cavaliers’ RPI was lousy — and it was, at No. 65 — thanks greatly to a nonconference schedule that was rated No. 257 in the country. UVA lost six of those games, which was bad, but what the Cavaliers did in one of the two best baseball conferences in the country should have overshadowed those issues.

Is it Virginia’s fault that some of its traditional nonconference opponents weren’t as good as usual? Past committees didn’t seem to hold that against the Cavaliers.

So, Brian O’Connor’s team, a regular participant in the NCAA Tournament, is left out of the postseason, the first time since 1994 that an ACC team finished five or more games above .500 in the league and was snubbed by the selection committee.

This stinks.

UVA’s national ACR number was 40, compared to other teams that got in: Kansas State (31-24, ACR 47); Kentucky (29-24, No. 38); Cincinnati (32-24, No. 43); Southern Cal (35-21, No. 44); Oklahoma State (28-23, No. 41); Arizona State (35-22, No. 39).

Also consider that Miami went 1-7 to finish the regular season and was No. 45, while Kentucky was 5-9 over its last 14 games, Kansas State was 5-7, USC was 3-6, and Oklahoma State was under .500 most of the season.

Oh, and that FSU series?

NCAA committee chairman Jay Artigues said the FSU series was discussed by the committee.

“It was definitely discussed and you hate to see that, but we can only evaluate for teams they do play,” Artigues said.

Lame.

He also pointed out that Virginia’s ACC schedule was “unbalanced.” Last time I checked, you play the ACC schedule you’re handed. UVA did and finished sixth.

Frankly, Artigues’ argument doesn’t add up, considering the numbers comparisons and going grossly against the grain considering the quality of the ACC.