Heroics Earn Davidson Its First NCAA Berth

Davidson (Photo by Bill Barrett/Atlantic-10 Conference)

Dick Cooke thought he was relaxed.

The veteran Davidson coach, in his 27th season at the school outside of Charlotte was getting ready for an in-game interview on the TV broadcast of the Atlantic-10 Conference Tournament. He was moving onto the field, putting on his headset and trying to find his spot and listen for his cue.

In the background, though, his Wildcats had their own ideas, such as how best to photobomb their head coach.

“I’m getting interviewed,” Cooke said Sunday night, “and they asked me something about haircuts. I said, ‘Well, I grew up in 1970s, so nothing really fazes me when it comes to hair.’ But while I was talking, three of our guys have the clippers out and are giving a haircut behind me. They buzzed down to the scalp, right down the middle of his head. Then there’s another one, and he’s got a fungo bat with red tape, and he’s turning it like a barber pole.

”Clearly they were not too stressed out by the environment.”

That showed in their play as well. Davidson has played baseball for 115 years, but never like this. The Wildcats have a 32-24 record, the most wins they’ve ever had, and the last win was the sweetest. Davidson beat top-seeded Virginia Commonwealth twice on Saturday to win the A-10 Tournament, earning the program’s first NCAA tournament berth.

It’s the first league baseball title ever for the Wildcats, who spent 74 years in the Southern Conference and are in their third season in the A-10.

Davidson’s baseball community is strong, both in college and pro ball. It includes the 1980s tenure of coach George Greer, who later won three Atlantic Coast Conference titles at Wake Forest and became renowned hitting coach in the Mets and Cardinals systems, and later included Jim Stoeckel, who’s still the Reds’ director of global scouting.

Players on some of those clubs litter pro ball, from scouts such as Billy Masse and Gus Quattlebaum to college coaches Mik Aoki (Notre Dame), Chris Pollard (Duke), Pete Hughes (Oklahoma) and Brett Boretti (Columbia), to ex-big leaguer Robert Eenhoorn, the head of the Netherlands’ baseball federation. The pride in the program runs deep, but none of those players were able to accomplish what this year’s heroes, such as Alec Acosta, Will Robertson, Brian Fortier and Durin O’Linger were able to pull off.

Start with O’Linger, whose performance would never be repeated in pro ball. Davidson has just three scholarships to work with; the NCAA limit is 11.7. As Cooke puts it, “Because of the way we’re resourced, we run low on pitching quicker than others.”

When they ran low, they ran to O’Linger.

A Phi Beta Kappa member who’s headed to pharmacy school in Florida in the fall, O’Linger already was the Wildcats’ ace before the A-10 Tournament. He became a hero with an epic week. He threw 140 pitches Wednesday in a 5-2 victory against St. Bonaventure, going 8.1 innings. Then on Friday in an elimination game against host Saint Louis, Davidson rallied from a 7-3 deficit to win 8-7 in 10, with O’Linger striking out six in three shutout innings on one day of rest.

“I went to my assistant (Rucker Taylor) the next day and said, ‘Do I put his name on the lineup card?’” Cooke said. “He said he thought he had an out or two in him. I knew this could be his last hurrah, the last time he pitches. We gave the kid a chance to be a hero.”

O’Linger gave the Wildcats three more innings Saturday in the championship game and threw 236 pitches for the week, going 14.1 innings and giving up four runs while striking out 11. It means that if O’Linger can still raise his right arm after all those pitches, he won’t be shaving his playoff beard anytime soon.

“He still has it but he hates it,” Cooke said. “But he’s a baseball player, so he’s superstitious. He started growing the beard and started pitching well. He told me he was getting rid of it, but you know, you never mess with a streak.”

O’Linger was just the co-MVP of the tournament, though, because second baseman Acosta—a DH most of the season due to a bum elbow—hit five home runs in Davidson’s six-game run. He had 13 hits and 11 RBIs in the tournament to go with his five homers, after having one home run in his three seasons coming into the event.

Power is Davidson’s calling card. The NCAA’s online records go back only to 2003, and the 70 home runs this year’s team has hit is the most in that span. Robertson, a senior with the best bat speed on the team, hit his 18th in the title game and ranks 15th nationally; Fortier, a hulking 6-foot-5 senior, has 15 this season and went 3-for-5 in the title game. They lead the way for an offense that ranks 22nd in the country in homers.

“I have a little different perspective than a lot of coaches,” Cooke said, “because of how we’re resourced. I’m not going to lose my job because we don’t win the title, you know? It’s different. I get to see guys compete; I get to help guys develop. That’s kind of the fun thing about it. We’re able to see if guys can develop, and a lot of these guys have.”

Cooke got to enjoy the championship for about 10 minutes. One of his daughters was in a volleyball tournament in Chicago, so his wife Susan yo-yo’d between Chicago and Saint Louis as the Wildcats closed in on the title. She saw the championship Saturday night and readied the car while Cooke, still in his uniform, distributed meal money to his players at 1:30 a.m. in the hotel lobby. He and his wife got a few hours’ sleep, hopped in the car at 6 a.m., drove to Chicago on Sunday to see the end of their daughter’s tournament, then hopped on a flight Sunday evening to go back to Charlotte for the viewing party today.

They watched together as the Wildcats were sent to the Chapel Hill Regional. Cooke spent part of that drive to Chicago and the flight back home thinking about possible landing spots. The Wildcats play at Wake Forest and North Carolina regularly, and lost earlier in the month to the Tar Heels in a walk-off. It’s too bad, because Cooke and the ‘Cats were dreaming of a potential Stanford regional, so they could be close to their most famous alumnus.

After all, this has never happened before. Why not have fun with it?

“I’d love it if we got sent to Stanford,” Cooke said Sunday, “so we could get Steph Curry to come out and take some BP with us. That would be fun.”

And Davidson baseball never has been more fun.