Candid Coach Convos: Virginia’s Brian O’Connor

Interactive D1Baseball Staff - August 23, 2021

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D1Baseball continues to expand its interactive elements to its users, and in a new series called ‘Candid Convos with Coaches’, we will spend an hour with various coaches around the country getting their pulse on the sport as a whole, their program, and their pathway to Division I Baseball.

We hope to feature a new coach each week in our video and podcast series. And in our first edition, our Mike Rooney, Kendall Rogers, and Aaron Fitt sat down with Texas A&M head coach Jim Schlossnagle, here. This week, we chat with Virginia head coach Brian O’Connor.

O’Connor has established himself as one of the premier coaches in college baseball. He has turned Virginia into a postseason mainstay in his 18 seasons with the program. And in addition to winning the program’s first national title in 2015, he guided the Cavaliers back to the College World Series in 2021 in what was a magical postseason.

Some of the questions we discussed with O’Connor include:

• What happened with Virginia’s program over the last few years?

• Virginia was in a state of misery at one point in 2021. Then, everything changed. What was it?

• O’Connor discusses his relationship with Paul Mainieri, and Mainieri’s impact on the sport.

• More …