Charlottesville, VA (cvillerightnow.com):Virginia Baseball has succeeded in easing the nerves of its fans after about as perfect a series vs Stanford as possible.  They swept the Cardinal out while putting up 33 runs across the three games, and in the process earned Brian O’Connor win number 900 across his storied career.  The three games sweep brought Virginia to 15-11 in the 2025 season going to several important ACC series in the month of April.  This evening however, the Hoos have an opportunity to establish a new rhythm playing in the way they did this past weekend against Stanford.  Their opponents will be the Old Dominion Monarchs out of the Sun Belt Conference.   

Head Coach Chris Finwood’s outfit are 8-17 this year coming off a tough series on the road against Appalachian State that saw them nab the final game of the series 7-6.  Their midweek contest against Virginia is their chance to go in with their heads held high to a huge weekend battle with #20 Troy in Norfolk.  The team is made of several strong, well-trained, junior college products that have hit the ball well this season.  Senior infielder Zach Leite leads the squad in average at .351, extra base hits, RBIs, and on base percentage at 41.5%.  Leite shares the team lead in hits with senior infielder Kyle Edwards, both men sit at 26 hits for the year.  Edwards is also the team’s stolen base leader, swiping 14 bags and only being caught out once throughout the campaign.  Their pitching has let them down quite a bit this year, but with the Sun Belt being a hitters league, the staff’s numbers may be a bit deceiving.  Starting the game for the Monarchs will be first-year righthander Jayce Park, who has struck out eighters in nine innings of work as their midweek starter this season.  He is 0-2 on the year and is pitching to a 5.79 ERA going to play against Virginia.  No one on the staff has an ERA under 4 but opponents are hitting just .250 against them as a unit.   

With hot bats, the Hoos can handle ODU pitching without much worry.  Their main challenge will be not letting the talented, grizzled veterans of this Monarch hitting core make an impact on the contest.  That comes from taking every inning one batter at a time, trusting in Jacob Ferrence’s ability to know each man on the mound and call the right pitches that will reliably get weak contact.  Starting it off will be Bradley Hodges, who has quietly moved his ERA down to 2.70 across his short, effective, midweek starts since he made his return to the mound for Virginia.  He has struck out 11 batters in 6.1 innings of work.  Virginia fans will hope Hodges starts off a perfect staff day for the Hoos to preserve as much arm strength on the staff as necessary to perform a sweep of NC State in Raleigh.  Coverage begins at 5:45 tonight on WINA, first pitch is at 6:00pm between Old Dominion and Virginia.