Beating the top overall seed in the NCAA baseball tournament in consecutive seasons has significant benefits, Maryland Coach John Szefc said. It certainly will have an impact on recruiting and also could help jump-start renovations to the team’s 50-year-old home stadium, Shipley Field, which Szefc said “needs a lot of upgrades.”
But the immediate payoff from Monday’s 2-1 win at UCLA is a repeat trip to the super regionals against Virginia, the team that spoiled the Terrapins’ first berth in that round last season.
The words “Omaha” and “College World Series” — the destination for the winner of the best-of-three series in Charlottesville that will begin Friday afternoon — were rarely used as the Terrapins (42-22) returned to practice in College Park on Wednesday. Maryland has won 10 of 14 postseason games dating from last season, but its loss to the Cavaliers in the super regional last spring lingers.
[Jones hit his stride just in time for Virginia’s postseason push]
“It’s fun. We’re going to go back down there and get another chance at them,” said Maryland pitcher Mike Shawaryn, the sophomore all-American who will start for the Terrapins on Friday. “As a college baseball player, you live for that type of atmosphere.”
Shawaryn will enter Friday’s game with a 13-2 record and a 1.66 ERA, and though he acknowledged the offensive abilities of a Virginia team that plated 14 runs in winning the final regional title game against Southern Cal last week, he didn’t look worried on Wednesday that the Cavaliers (37-22) might be peaking at the perfect time.
[Terps, Cavs share ‘super awkward’ flight back from L.A.]
More than half the Terrapins’ roster experienced the loss in the super regional a year ago, but Szefc said his team will not implement a new strategy this time. He continued to call the pairing “bizarre” this week — especially considering each was tagged with a No. 3 seed after earning NCAA tournament berths with a late-season push — but he reminded everyone that baseball is a repetitious game that demands consistent routine.
Szefc’s players have embraced that approach despite an up-and-down season. A pivotal moment for the team came in April, when center fielder LaMonte Wade returned to the lineup.
The junior reestablished himself at the plate and in the field after missing six weeks with a broken hamate bone, giving Szefc the flexibility to move second baseman Brandon Lowe from leadoff hitter to the three-hole and slotting the athletic Wade at the top of the order.
“He’s a really unique leadoff hitter because he can take the ball out of the yard or he can hit a groundball out of the six-hole with two strikes or put a good bunt down. So he can do a lot of things. He’s a big physical kid, a left-handed hitter,” Szefc said. “He’s just really gotten better since he’s gotten back.”
Wade leads the team in batting average (.344) and on-base percentage (.462), and he is coming off a stunning performance in Maryland’s advancement through the Los Angeles regional last weekend. He belted two home runs in two games against UCLA and flashed his defensive prowess. He robbed a home run with a daring catch at the wall against Mississippi in the opener, then gunned down two runners with throws to the plate in two games against UCLA. The second throw ended the third inning of the rubber match, with Maryland catcher Kevin Martir emotionally spiking the ball after tagging out UCLA base runner Darrell Miller Jr.
“Just making sure you throw a strong, accurate throw and be able to get it done,” Wade said of the play. “I was able to do that.”
[Watch Wade’s throw and Martir’s celebration]
It was the type of performance that Wade’s teammates rallied around despite being on the road against the top-seeded team in the tournament. Wednesday’s practice marked just the third day in the previous 20 that Maryland wasn’t on the road — practice began just hours after the team had returned to College Park on a cross-country charter flight with Virginia — and the Terrapins were back on a bus Thursday morning, bound for Charlottesville.
“We’re happy about that, believe me,” Szefc said. “Those guys are very good, and I think we’re pretty good.”
