Virginia\u2019s postseason run came to an end Sunday night as Jacksonville State held off a late Cavaliers rally for a 7-6 victory in the NCAA Hattiesburg Regional elimination game.<\/p>\n
The loss concluded Virginia\u2019s season at 37-23 and ended the Cavaliers\u2019 bid to advance to the regional championship round. Jacksonville State moved on to face Little Rock, needing two wins to claim the regional title.<\/p>\n
Virginia found itself in a deep early hole as Jacksonville State built a 7-0 lead through eight innings. The Cavaliers, however, mounted a dramatic comeback attempt in the top of the eighth, capitalizing on control issues from the Gamecocks\u2019 pitching staff to score six runs and cut the deficit to one.<\/p>\n
After Virginia\u2019s bullpen kept Jacksonville State off the scoreboard in the bottom of the eighth and ninth innings, the Cavaliers entered their final at-bat with a chance to complete the comeback. Jacksonville State\u2019s pitching staff regrouped and closed out the victory, stranding Virginia\u2019s hopes of extending its season.<\/p>\n
The defeat came one day after Virginia outlasted host Southern Miss 15-11 in a 10-inning elimination game, knocking the regional\u2019s top seed out of the tournament and keeping the Cavaliers alive for another day.<\/p>\n
In their first NCAA Tournament appearance under first-year head coach Chris Pollard, the Cavaliers battled through a challenging regional field but were unable to overcome Jacksonville State, which won twice against Virginia during the weekend.<\/p>\n
Virginia finished the 2026 season with a trip to the NCAA Tournament and a regional final-four appearance, while Jacksonville State advanced to the Hattiesburg Regional championship game.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 by WSLS 10 – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Virginia\u2019s postseason run came to an end Sunday night as Jacksonville State held off a late Cavaliers rally…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":291352,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[116,118,117,123133,123132],"class_list":["post-291351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news","tag-virginia-athletics","tag-virginia-baseball"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=291351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291351\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/291352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}