Kyle Teel shares emotions of near walk-off home run

A matter of feet separated Virginia from a confidence-boosting walkoff win and dropping Game 1 of their Super Regional to ACC rival Duke. And standing in the on-deck circle, Cavaliers catcher Kyle Teel had a great view of the near-walk-off hit.

Trailing Duke, 5-4, in the bottom of the ninth inning in Game 1 of the Super Regional, Virginia had runners on first and second base with two outs. Jake Gelof stood in the batters box and took a pitch to deep left centerfield.

It looked for a moment as if Virginia was going to stun Duke and be a win away from Omaha and the College World Series.

“I was just watching the ball off the bat. It looked good. I could tell he didn’t get all of it, but he took a good swing on it and then I just saw it hung up there a little bit,” Teel said, emotion evident in his voice, “and it’s just baseball.”

Virginia still has a chance to salvage the Super Regional, but will need to win a pair of games over the weekend to do so. Game 2 of the Charlottesville Super Regional is scheduled for Saturday at noon.

Virginia tried to ‘take the fight’ to Duke in Game 1 of the Super Regional

The Virginia lineup had been swinging early and often against pitching from Duke in the Charlottesville Super Regional on Friday. In Game 1 of a best-of-three series between conference foes with a trip to the College World Series on the line, Virginia head coach Brian O’Connor explained the offensive approach.

In the first four innings of the game, Virginia’s leadoff hitter for the inning swung and put the first pitch in play, all resulting in outs. O’Connor didn’t want the aggressive approach to slow down, despite the paltry results.

“We’ve tried to take the fight to them and gotten below some balls. We just need to get in the middle of the baseball and get more line drives,” O’Connor said.

Virginia did manage to push a run across in the bottom of the third inning in response to Duke plating a pair. The Blue Devils would plate another run and by the time O’Connor spoke to the ESPN2 broadcast, the Cavaliers still trailed, 3-1.

Virginia plated three more runs in the game and led, 4-3, before eventually losing by a run in heartbreaking fashion on the last swing of the game.