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Oak also wins Baseball America's COY award

From UVa:

O’Connor Named Baseball America National Coach of Year
Virginia head coach earns National Coach of Year honors from four media outlets

Virginia head coach Brian O’Connor has been selected as the 2015 National Coach of the Year by Baseball America, as announced Friday by the publication. Baseball America is the fourth organization to honor O’Connor as its National Coach of the Year, joining Collegiate Baseball, D1Baseball and Perfect Game.

O’Connor has been named National Coach of the Year twice in his career. He also was the NCBWA and College Baseball Insider National Coach of the Year in 2009. In addition, he was named one of four Coaches of the Year by the College Baseball Foundation in 2006.

O’Connor guided Virginia to its first NCAA Championship in 2015. UVa also won its sixth regional championship in the last seven years.

While UVa battled through a turbulent regular-season which was plagued by injuries, youth and inconsistency, the Cavaliers saved their best baseball for May and June. A No. 3 regional seed, UVa swept through three games at the NCAA Lake Elsinore (Calif.) Regional before returning home to post a pair of comeback wins over Maryland to take the NCAA Charlottesville Super Regional and advance to the College World Series.

Virginia went 10-2 in the NCAA tournament, including a 5-2 mark at the CWS. UVa defeated Arkansas in its CWS opener before recording a pair of wins over both No. 4 national seed Florida and Vanderbilt to capture the championship. After losing the opening game of the best-of-3 CWS Finals to Vanderbilt, UVa became just the third team in the finals era to rebound and win the series.

Virginia is one of six programs to reach each of the last 12 NCAA tournaments and one of two schools to play in four College World Series since 2009. UVa posted a 44-24 record in 2015 for its 10th 40-win season in the last dozen seasons as O’Connor upped his career record at UVa to 558-201-2.

NCAA named their top ten defensive plays in the CWS

Number 9 was Towns' barehanded catch and throw to second base against Vanderbilt. Number 5 was Clement's diving catch on the ball hit up the middle against Vandy. Number 2 was Towns' dive to catch the ball headed for the corner and throw to first against Vandy. Number 1 was Kirby's last pitch against Vandy. UVA had several other outstanding defensive plays including Waddell's diving backhanded flip to Smith against Vandy. Does anyone else see a pattern? UVA's defense against Vanderbilt was awesome.

? about the OL recruits

Questions for Brad, Justin, or anyone with access to the staff.

Anyone know how the coaches see these guys slotting and/or working together? Is anyone in the group a guaranteed tackle, guard, or center (know they are all listed at tackle)? Hopefully they are all redshirting, but does anyone foresee earlier playing time for one or more of the group as opposed to the others?

Just curious how the pieces fit together now that there are several guys involved ...

Virginia Players in Orlando and Utah Summer Leagues

Orlando Summer League - Akil Mitchell with Brooklyn
July 4th - 5 PM ET vs. Memphis
July 5th - 5 PM ET vs. Miami
July 7th - 3 PM ET vs. Charlotte
July 9th - 3 PM ET vs. Orlando White
July 10th - Championship day

Utah Summer League - Darion Atkins with San Antonio
July 6th - 7 PM ET vs. Philly (Okafor)
July 7th - 9 PM ET vs. Utah
July 9th - 7 PM ET vs. Boston


Does anybody know if Darion Atkins and/or Akil Mitchell will continue to play with the same team during the Las Vegas Summer League?

Sacha Killeya-Jones videos

Thanks, Jacey from the Wolfpacker for the 3 excellent videos of Sacha. They confirm what I saw watching an entire game of his and what I heard from a former player who has seen Sacha play up close a number of times - that he's a promising big whose ranking from Rivals is about right. When there are other bigs on the court, he seems content to hang around the perimeter instead of battling inside. Most of the video you see where he scores inside is against shorter competition. The criticism of him after his sophomore year that he is a bit soft still seems valid, but his inside skills have gotten better under Staples' tutelage and encouragement. I still wouldn't mind having him decide to come here, but, personally, I'd rather see us get someone like Gabriel who has perimeter skills, but is a quicker and better inside player. In any event, if Sacha doesn't come here, I'm not going to lose any sleep because I think we'll find a much better replacement for him (if we haven't already in the long term in Huff.) If Diakite commits here, we're in pretty good shape inside for some time with Wilkins, Salt, Reuter, Diakite, and Huff. Adding another solid big will be icing on the cake.
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