When then-Virginia head coach Brian O’Connor decided to leave to take the Mississippi State job, Aidan Teel knew what he had to do: He had to follow him.

“Obviously, I was a little shocked, I wasn’t sure what my next move was going to be,” Teel said. “Once I saw that he left, I entered the transfer portal because I wanted to continue to play for coach O’Connor. I’ve said this in every interview last year, every time I talk about him: He’s a really special coach, he’s a Hall of Fame coach. To have the privilege of playing for him is really, really special, and I wouldn’t want to play college baseball for anyone else.”

Teel wouldn’t be the only Virginia player to move from Charlottesville to Starkville, as four of his teammates did the same thing. But for a Virginia lifer like him, it was a big deal.

Teel is the younger brother of Kyle Teel, who was a consensus All-American his final year at Virginia. Kyle Teel ended up getting selected by the Boston Red Sox with the 14th pick of the 2023 MLB Draft and now plays for the Chicago White Sox as a catcher.

Teel’s ties with O’Connor date back years. The Cavaliers would recruit out of the Teels’ home state of New Jersey. Both Teels ended up attending Virginia camps growing up, with Aidan Teel first attending when he was in middle school.

“My dad went down to UVA, and he brought my brother down there for a camp, and they really liked him,” Aidan Teel said. “He said, ‘Hey, I have another one’ after my brother committed. I started going down there and then it was kind of the same story with me my freshman year when I committed.”

The Teel boys are exactly what you would expect from two college athletes growing up together: fiercely competitive. Their father, Garett, was drafted by the Dodgers, and their mother, Janine Libutti, played softball at William Paterson University, so they knew how to handle it. The age gap, and the COVID-19 pandemic later, meant that the Teel boys didn’t play together, with the exception of high school football.

“When (Aidan) was a freshman and Kyle was a senior, they both played varsity football together,” Libutti said. “I would have parents tell me that their topic of conversation at dinner was that Kyle was on offense and Aidan was on defense in practice and what it would look like and how they would chase each other down the field. It was like something they had never seen before.”

Garett Teel operates a baseball school, and it was the perfect place for his sons to release all of their competitive and athletic energy. Garett would pick them up from school, bring them back to his facility and once their homework was done, they were allowed to do whatever they wanted.

“It was kind of a good carrot to have,” Garett Teel said. “They were always walking around, talking to my instructors. If they had a break, ‘Can you flip to me? Can you throw to me?’ Whatever, they were always part of the baseball school, it was pretty cool.

“They’d be calling me at 9:30 at night saying, when they got a little older, ‘Can we hit?’ I’d be on my 10th lesson of the day, and how do you say no to your kid? Sure, come on down, and we’d be there til midnight, 10 o’clock til midnight when they were in eighth grade through high school.”

Following big bro

Aidan Teel opted to graduate from high school a year early in 2022 and join Kyle at Virginia for the 2023 season, though he was on the shelf all season while recovering from Tommy John surgery. While he couldn’t play, it gave him a year to watch and learn from his soon-to-be All-American brother and adjust to college life.

“It was really awesome being able to have him there and show me the ropes, but he also let me make my mistakes,” Teel said. “He let me grow as a human and let me do my own thing because if he was going to hold my hand the entire way, that wouldn’t have taught me everything. He was there when I needed him, but he also let me do my own thing and learn the things that you need to learn transitioning to college on my own.

“It was really awesome being in the same dugout as him, being able to watch him play and have an unbelievable year. It was really special. Honestly, the biggest takeaway I took from him was he just did everything he could for the team. He was so bought in on helping the team win, and it shows.”

The two brothers are still helpful to each other to this day. They try to not talk about baseball because of how intertwined their lives are with the sport, but it tends to come up from time to time, like when they play the video game “Rocket League” with each other.

“We hang out, and sometimes the talk of hitting will creep in,” Aidan Teel said. “It’s just him and I bouncing ideas off one another. Because at the end of the day, it is a two-way street. Whenever he’s struggling with something, I’m there to tell him, ‘Hey, look, maybe it’s this, maybe it’s that.’ It’s the same thing with me and him. He’ll tell me, ‘Hey, keep your head down longer,’ or something like that. It’s always a two-way street with him and I. We try not to have baseball consume our lives because it is just something that we do and, yes, we’ve spent our whole lives doing it. But it’s always good to be able to talk to each other just as brothers rather than baseball players.”

Aidan Teel was healthy for the 2024 season and played both ways for the Cavaliers. Teel made 20 appearances on the mound, all in relief, picked up six saves and had a 7.88 ERA. Offensively, he only had 11 plate appearances, but he did hit three home runs.

Positional flexibility was always a strength for Teel. When he committed to Virginia, he played shortstop in addition to pitching and catching. Pitching soon made it hard to also play catcher, and an experiment while Teel was recovering from Tommy John surgery led to him transitioning to the outfield.

“When I had committed to the University of Virginia, I was a shortstop and a pitcher and a catcher and I had never played the outfield,” Teel said. “When I got to school, I was recovering from Tommy John surgery, and coach O’Connor one day at practice said, ‘Hey, Teel, go out and play the outfield, I want to see you run around a little bit.’

“I went out there and I was making diving catches and just having fun out there with a big smile on my face, and coach Oak never let me come back in the infield.”

Teel and O’Connor decided that it would be best for his career for him to focus on being a fielder and to drop pitching. After a stint in the Northwoods League where he played center field and learned more about the position, he broke out in a big way for Virginia. Teel hit .317 with seven home runs and 40 RBIs. Just like when he was watching his brother, it all came back to doing what was best for the team.

While Teel had a successful season, the Cavaliers limped to a 32-18 record and missed the NCAA Tournament entirely. O’Connor left to take the Mississippi State job, and Teel followed him to Starkville.

“He’s done such a great job teaching me the way and the standard of the way we do things on the baseball field,” Teel said. “Not only does he create great baseball players, he creates better men with the way he goes about his business and teaches us to go about ours. It was tough to leave UVA for being there for three years, but new beginnings are always great. I’m really excited to be here, and there was no better place he could have came than Mississippi State.”

His own legacy

Leaving Virginia for Mississippi State also gave Teel a chance to create his own legacy and not have to worry about being in his brother’s shadow.

“I think at UVA, it was awesome to have that Teel name and kind of be able to kind of do the things my brother did and help teams win the national championship,” Aidan Teel said. “But also, it is great being here kind of with a fresh start and being like, hey, new kid on the block, showing these guys what not only I’m made of, but the other guys at UVA are made of.”

At Mississippi State, he’s not Kyle’s brother, not that Kyle ever made him feel like he was just “Kyle’s brother.” But at a new school where he’s playing a different position than his brother, Aidan Teel is writing his own chapter. When he decided to make the move, his parents were supportive.

“He’ll tell you to this day, he loves Virginia,” Garett Teel said. “But it’s nice to be somewhere where your brother wasn’t. No matter what happens, when we’re trying to keep it about Aidan, everyone always has to bring something up about Kyle. It’s hard not to – he’s having such a good start to his Major League career and stuff like that. Aidan’s very proud of his brother and they’re best friends and they’re tight as can be and talk all the time. He looks up to his older brother and gives him great advice. But it’s nice to see him do his own thing right now, especially that Aidan’s an outfielder. He’s getting out of the Kyle Teel spotlight.”

Teel had a slow start to the season, picking up just four hits in his first eight games in a Mississippi State uniform, but he’s shown flashes of why he was such a big get for Mississippi State out of the transfer portal.

After a weekend series against Delaware where he went 1 for 6, Teel stepped up to the plate against Austin Peay with the Bulldogs leading 3-1 in the bottom of the third inning and the bases loaded. Teel broke the game wide open by crushing a grand slam to right field and recording his first home run as a Bulldog.

The respect Teel has for O’Connor goes both ways. While Teel’s start to the season wasn’t up to his standard, O’Connor knows what he’s capable of doing.

“When I made this decision to come from Virginia to Mississippi State, Aidan knew rather quickly that this is what he wanted to do,” O’Connor said. “The guy’s a fighter. I know maybe he hasn’t started the season out up to his own expectations, but he’s a high, high quality player. He had over 25 extra-base hits last year and plays a great center field. It’s a terrific family that believes in what we do, and I believe in him.”

Libutti recalled Teel telling her once that being at Mississippi State was like a “renewed baseball” for him. As Mississippi State baseball begins a new era under O’Connor, so too is Teel.