It might not be too much of an oversimplification to say that which ever team wins the battle when the ball is on the ground will win the game in Saturday night's primetime showdown between No. 4 Maryland and No. 1 Virginia at Capital One Field at Byrd Stadium.The Wahoos lead the nation in groundballs with 40.00 per game. Maryland is third in the country at 37.29 per game. Those numbers can be fudged a bit depending on how stats are called during a game, but one thing that might be a bit more fair is groundball percentage, which looks at the percentage of groundballs in a game or a season that a team gets.
Virginia has a groundball percentage of .596, which is the best among teams ranked in the top 10 in the NCAA rankings for groundballs per game (I'm not going to do all 58 Div. 1 teams). Maryland checks in at No. 6 in groundball percentage with .549.
However, Virginia has played only one team (Syracuse) ranked in the top 10 in groundballs per game. Maryland has played three of the top 10 already in 2010.
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