Minium: Finwood Says His Baseball Team Made Huge Sacrifices and Enters Final Home Stand With a Lot to Play For
By Harry Minium
NORFOLK, Va. – Perhaps the most challenging, most unusual and in many ways most frustrating of Old Dominion’s 95 baseball regular seasons concludes this week with a three-game “homestand” against Coastal Carolina on Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
The games will be played at War Memorial Stadium in Hampton. As usual, the Monarchs will prepare for playing at “home” by loading up several vans with equipment and driving 30-to-60 minutes, depending on traffic, to a stadium where they never practice.
ODU (21-26 overall, 15-12 Sun Belt) hasn’t had a true home game since last season as Bud Metheny Ballpark is undergoing a $24 million makeover.
The Monarchs operate out of a temporary locker room adjacent to the equipment room in the Jim Jarrett Athletic Administration Building and to call the facility austere is being generous.
They’ve packed their bags and hit the road for all 13 of their “home games,” either to Hampton or Norfolk’s Harbor Park. And not even veteran ODU Head Coach Chris Finwood had a clue just how difficult it would be to not play at home.
“Anybody who thinks doing something like this is hard and think they are ready for it, they’re not,” he said. “It’s been way harder than I thought it would be. You can’t even describe how hard it is to never really play at home.
“Even the logistics of practice, having to work around construction, not having a locker room or our offices, it all wears on you.
“But our guys have managed to hang in there.”
A month ago, things were at a low ebb.
After a 10-0 loss to Louisiana at Harbor Park, and then a heartbreaking, 7-6, loss at Louisiana Monroe, the Sun Belt’s last-place team, the Monarchs were 13-25 overall and 10-10 in the Sun Belt. They were dangerously close to being one of the four Sun Belt teams that would not travel to Montgomery, Alabama for the league tournament.
ODU had played a brutal schedule, with three-game series’ at Georgia Tech and Auburn and road games against Virginia, East Carolina and Mississippi State, followed by three-game series against five of the top six teams in the Sun Belt.
Coastal will make it six-for-six.
“You know, we took our lumps, but we never folded,” Finwood said. “We were kind of hanging around (in the league standings) and then we told the guys, ‘Hey, we’ve got to win the next three weekends, at least go 6-3.’”
The Monarchs did better than that. ODU won eight of its last ten games, and claimed series wins against ULM (2-1), Marshall (2-1) and James Madison (3-0) to clinch a Sun Belt Tournament bid.
ODU hasn’t been swept in a Sun Belt series this season, but the Monarchs have yet to play a Sun Belt team quite like Coastal.
The Chanticleers are 41-11 overall, 23-4 in the Sun Belt and have won 11 games in a row. Ranked 12th in the Division I RPI and No. 11 in the D1 Baseball Top 25, they recently swept a home-and-home series with No. 15 Clemson.
Their starting pitchers, Jacob Morrison (9-0, 1.87 ERA), Cameron Flukey (5-1, 3.37) and Riley Eikhoff (5-2, 3.39) all rank among the league’s top five pitchers. The Coastal pitching staff has a combined 3.36 ERA, almost a full run better than anyone else in the league.
But to Finwood, Coastal isn’t an obstacle but an opportunity. ODU has beaten three nationally-ranked teams this season – No. 6 Auburn, No. 19 Southern Miss and No. 22 Troy.
“That’s a great team and Coastal has such a great program,” Finwood said. “We know it’s going to be hard to beat them.
“It’s fun to be playing for something at this time of the year. And it’s nice not going into the last weekend worrying about if you’re in the tournament.”
ODU must win one of three games against Coastal to clinch one of the top six spots in the Sun Belt Tournament.
Six Sun Belt teams receive byes into the tournament’s double-elimination quarterfinals on May 21. A day earlier, seeds No. 7 through No. 10 meet, with two winners advancing into the quarterfinals.
ODU wants to avoid playing in the dreaded single-elimination first round.
Conceivably, ODU could still avoid the first-round play-in even if Coastal sweeps the Monarchs. They would have to depend on others to win a couple of games.
But why leave things to chance?
“Honestly, if you’re one of the four teams who play the first day, you can’t win the tournament,” Finwood said. “You’re always a game behind. I don’t think anyone has ever done it.”
The Monarchs tried valiantly last season, beating South Alabama in the play-in round and then knocking off top seed Louisiana, 7-3. But then came back-to-back losses to Georgia Southern and James Madison.
“It always seems to catch up with your pitching staff in the third game, and that’s what happened to us,” Finwood said.
Finwood said he’s hoping for large crowds this week – Thursday’s game begins at 6, Friday’s at 3 and Saturday’s at 1. He says his players deserve a good sendoff.
Because the Monarchs missed last week’s graduation ceremonies while playing at JMU, 11 Monarchs will receive their diplomas before Friday’s game. ODU will then honor its seniors on Saturday.
“I’m really proud of our guys,” he said. “They haven’t ever bitched about things.
“They’re sucking it up this year so that future teams will have the ability to play in a nice place.
“I think, in their own way, this team is leaving their mark on the program because they’ve been in such difficult circumstances, and they’ve done a good job.
“This is a good group of dudes, and they played hard all season, and they competed all season. We’ve been in so many close games and finally, we’re starting to win some of them.
“And anything can happen in the Sun Belt Tournament.”
Meaning, the final chapter of the 2025 ODU baseball team has yet to be written.
Minium is ODU’s senior executive writer. Contact him at hminium@odu.edu or follow him on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram