NEW YORK—On the heels of arguably the best season on the mound in the history of Villanova Baseball, junior starting pitcher Gordon Graceffo (Cranford, N.J.) was named to the All-BIG EAST Second Team in an announcement by the conference office on Wednesday afternoon. The postseason major awards and all-conference teams are voted on by the league's head coaches and are based on statistics from regular season conference games. Graceffo becomes just the third Villanova pitcher in the last 14 years to receive All-BIG EAST recognition.
 
Seven of Graceffo's 11 starts this season came against BIG EAST opponents and he went 4-2 with a 1.75 ERA in those starts. He averaged 7 1/3 innings per start in conference games and had 58 strikeouts compared to just 42 hits allowed over 51 1/3 innings pitched. Graceffo walked just eight batters in his seven league starts and had a strikeout-to-walk ratio of 7.25:1 while averaging 10.2 strikeouts per nine innings.
 
Graceffo put an exclamation point on his stellar year with a sensational run of five consecutive starts to end the season. In starts against Butler, Xavier, Connecticut, Georgetown and St. John's he went 4-0 with six earned runs allowed spanning 34 2/3 innings pitched, during which he walked just four batters and had 45 strikeouts. Graceffo pitched into at least the eighth inning in five of his final six starts of the year, including a complete game four-hitter with no earned runs allowed against Xavier and a career-high 12 strikeouts over eight innings in a win over BIG EAST regular season champion Connecticut.
 
In the BIG EAST leaders for conference play, Graceffo ranked second in strikeouts and innings pitched while finishing fourth in ERA and ninth in opponent batting average. Villanova won each of his last five starts of the year and was 8-3 with Graceffo on the mound during the 2021 season.
 
Graceffo went 7-2 overall with a 1.54 ERA in his 11 appearances on the year. He logged 82.0 innings pitched with 86 strikeouts and just 13 walks while holding opponents to a .221 batting average and a .262 slugging percentage against him. Graceffo was successful in preventing hard contact and yielded just 12 extra-base hits, including no home runs, to the 325 batters he faced. His ERA of 1.54 ranks fifth for a single-season in school history and is the lowest by any pitcher who has thrown as many innings as he has. He also set a new single-season school record for lowest WHIP (0.963) while ranking ninth in the program record book for strikeouts (86) and tied for ninth in wins (seven). At the end of the regular season Graceffo ranked eighth in the entire nation in ERA (1.54) while ranking 24^th nationally in fewest walks per nine innings (1.43) and 29^th in strikeout-to-walk ratio (6.62:1).
 
In three seasons with the Wildcats, including two abbreviated campaigns in 2020 and 2021 due to the COVID pandemic, Graceffo is 14-10 with a 2.86 ERA in 32 appearances (28 starts) and 179 1/3 innings pitched. He ranks third in school history in WHIP (1.193), tied for fourth in ERA (2.86), tied for ninth in lowest opponent batting average (.248) and tied for 11^th in wins (14).
 
The other recent Villanova pitchers to earn all-conference honors were Hunter Schryver (2016, 2017 first team) and Matt Meurer (2014 second team).