CHARLOTTESVILLE — Jay Woolfolk settled down to pitch into the ninth inning after a rough start, and No. 12 national seed Virginia scored six runs in the ninth inning during a 9-2 victory over Mississippi State on Sunday night, winning the Charlottesville Regional and earning a berth in a home Super Regional at Disharoon Park.
The Cavaliers will face Kansas State in a best-of-three Super Regional starting Friday or Saturday. The Wildcats won a regional hosted by No. 5 seed Arkansas in Fayetteville.
“We’ve been fortunate to host 11 regionals here, and by far this was the best crowd and the most electric that it has been in those 11 times hosting,” coach Brian O’Connor said on virginiasports.com about the sellout crowd of 5,919.
“That team has a chance to play for a while,” MSU coach Chris Lemonis added,
Woolfolk surrendered a two-run home run to Dakota Jordan in the bottom of the first inning after Henry Ford’s RBI single gave the Cavaliers (44-15) a 1-0 lead in the top half. David Mershon had a one-out single before Jordan homered.
Ford and Ference hit RBI singles in the top of the third to put Virginia up 3-2. Both runs were unearned after a two-out throwing error by Mershon at shortstop.
Woolfolk (3-1), a junior right-hander in his first season as a full-time baseball player after being a quarterback and pitcher for UVA, leads the Cavaliers’ staff with 35 walks this year. But only one of them came Sunday, when he held the Bulldogs (40-23) to five hits through seven scoreless innings after the first. His seven strikeouts and eight innings pitched were career highs.
Sharing the regional’s Most Outstanding Player honors with teammate Eric Becker, who drove in four runs Saturday against MSU, Woolfolk gave way to Chase Hungate after allowing a leadoff single in the ninth. Hungate’s second pitch turned into a double play.
“When you have teammates like these guys and you’ve got coaches like Coach Oak who believe in you, who keep throwing you out in those type of situations, you never lose confidence in yourself, no matter what goes on on that mound,” Woolfolk told virginiasports.com. “Without them, I wouldn’t have the confidence that I had to go out there and execute like I did.”
Virginia broke the game open in the ninth. No. 9 hitter Luke Hanson, a Lafayette High graduate, drove in the first two runs with a single. The final two runs scored on back-to-back wild pitches by Bulldogs reliever Karson Ligon.
Virginia has made six College World Series appearances, all since 2009. The Cavaliers won the event in 2015 after losing to Vanderbilt in the finals in the previous season.
Mississippi State has advanced to the CWS 12 times, most recently in 2021, when it won its only championship. The Bulldogs were the runners-up to UCLA in 2013.
Mississippi State beat St. John’s 13-5 in an elimination game to begin the day, but the Bulldogs couldn’t approach those numbers against Woolfolk.
“When he’s challenged in his life,” O’Connor said, “he can reflect back on this opportunity he had tonight and remember what he did when everybody needed him most.”
