Article about the current hot streak by our final Big 12 opponent next weekend.
WVU baseball stays hot
MORGANTOWN — Four weekends ago, West Virginia’s baseball team lost what was then the most lopsided game in Big 12 play this season, and a 15-2 defeat and a 17-16 record had manager Randy Mazey looking for answers.
Now he’s looking for a dictionary.
“A month ago, we were all standing here and you guys were asking me if I thought we were snake-bitten for some reason or another,” he said. “I don’t know what the opposite of snake-bitten is, but things are going our way pretty well right now.”
The Mountaineers are 10-3 since reaching their low point in that home loss to Kansas State, and on Sunday they completed a three-game sweep of Texas with a 9-5 win. WVU (27-19, 11-9 Big 12) has won five straight games and is tied with No. 12 TCU (33-12, 11-7) with 11 conference wins.
In the three wins, WVU batted .369 with 38 hits and 11 extra-base hits and outscored Texas 34-14. Starting pitchers for the Longhorns (21-27, 9-12) totaled 11 innings with a 13.09 ERA.
It’s WVU’s first three-game Big 12 sweep since 2014. In four seasons in the conference, the Mountaineers have won three series and are 8-4 against Texas, which has won seven regular season titles and five conference tournament championships since the league debuted in 1997.
“When we joined the Big 12, we knew we were going to strap in on against teams like Texas and Oklahoma, and we didn’t know what to expect,” Mazey said. “I think we’ve showed right now we’re as good as anybody. I think as this program matures and we get recruiting classes in here, this is going to start happening more often.”
The offense made the headlines throughout the series – Big 12 player of the week Jackson Cramer was 6-for-12 with five RBI, Big 12 newcomer of the week Ivan Vera had two hits in each game and is batting .435 now, freshman Darius Hill was 6-for-14 with six runs and six RBI – but there were notable pitching performances along the way, beginning with Friday’s start by Chad Donato.
“That wasn’t his best stuff, but that was his grittiest performance,” Mazey said.
The Big 12 pitcher of the week improved to 3-3 and lowered his ERA to 2.92. He allowed two runs in seven innings, but he pushed through 122 pitches in the rain and managed to strike out six, increasing his league-leading total to 94 in 82.1 innings.
“I didn’t have any fastball command,” he said. “The weather was horrible. The ball kept getting wet. Rain was flying everywhere. It was a dogfight.”
A day later, starter Ross Vance couldn’t hold a 5-0 lead and allowed six runs in 4.2 innings. Freshman Braden Zarbnisky relieved, and Zarbnisky, who has been WVU’s mid-week starter during this stretch and bats leadoff when he doesn’t pitch, allowed one run in 3.1 innings. WVU scored eight runs with Zarbnisky in the game.
“In the middle innings, nobody was putting up zeroes,” Mazey said. “Both teams were scoring a lot of runs.
Anybody who could put up some zeroes was probably going to win the game.”
On Sunday, freshman Michael Grove couldn’t make his start, and Connor Dotson had only a little time to prepare for his first start of the season. He allowed four earned runs in six innings, and WVU scored seven runs in the first two innings to help him get comfortable.
One of three relievers Mazey used was Jackson Stigman, who is from Austin, Texas. He pitched in every game against his hometown team and allowed one hit in five scoreless innings during the weekend.
“It’s all starting to click right now, and we couldn’t feel any better than we do right now,” said sophomore Kyle Davis, who homered in Saturday’s win. “Things haven’t gone our way at times this season, but it’s really good to see us clicking on all cylinders. We’ve been saying all year we’re a good team and it was just a matter of time until we started peaking. I think that’s right now.”
WVU plays host to Maryland (25-21) at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday and has its last home series over the weekend with William & Mary. The final four games are on the road, beginning with a game at Pitt and concluding with a three-game series at No. 8 Texas Tech (37-13, 17-4), which is in first place in the conference.
“We’ve got to take what we’ve done so far and run with it,” Davis said. “We can’t get complacent.”
“We’ve got a young team that works really hard and plays really hard,” Mazey said. “When you do that, good things will eventually happen for you. This game has a way of rewarding you when you deserve it. The way we went after it when things weren’t going well and we kept grinding and fighting and stayed positive and kept practicing, I think we deserved to get rewarded for it, and that’s why we’re playing so well right now.”
http://www.wvgazettemail.com/sports/20160508/wvu-baseball-stays-hot-sweeps-texas
WVU baseball stays hot
MORGANTOWN — Four weekends ago, West Virginia’s baseball team lost what was then the most lopsided game in Big 12 play this season, and a 15-2 defeat and a 17-16 record had manager Randy Mazey looking for answers.
Now he’s looking for a dictionary.
“A month ago, we were all standing here and you guys were asking me if I thought we were snake-bitten for some reason or another,” he said. “I don’t know what the opposite of snake-bitten is, but things are going our way pretty well right now.”
The Mountaineers are 10-3 since reaching their low point in that home loss to Kansas State, and on Sunday they completed a three-game sweep of Texas with a 9-5 win. WVU (27-19, 11-9 Big 12) has won five straight games and is tied with No. 12 TCU (33-12, 11-7) with 11 conference wins.
In the three wins, WVU batted .369 with 38 hits and 11 extra-base hits and outscored Texas 34-14. Starting pitchers for the Longhorns (21-27, 9-12) totaled 11 innings with a 13.09 ERA.
It’s WVU’s first three-game Big 12 sweep since 2014. In four seasons in the conference, the Mountaineers have won three series and are 8-4 against Texas, which has won seven regular season titles and five conference tournament championships since the league debuted in 1997.
“When we joined the Big 12, we knew we were going to strap in on against teams like Texas and Oklahoma, and we didn’t know what to expect,” Mazey said. “I think we’ve showed right now we’re as good as anybody. I think as this program matures and we get recruiting classes in here, this is going to start happening more often.”
The offense made the headlines throughout the series – Big 12 player of the week Jackson Cramer was 6-for-12 with five RBI, Big 12 newcomer of the week Ivan Vera had two hits in each game and is batting .435 now, freshman Darius Hill was 6-for-14 with six runs and six RBI – but there were notable pitching performances along the way, beginning with Friday’s start by Chad Donato.
“That wasn’t his best stuff, but that was his grittiest performance,” Mazey said.
The Big 12 pitcher of the week improved to 3-3 and lowered his ERA to 2.92. He allowed two runs in seven innings, but he pushed through 122 pitches in the rain and managed to strike out six, increasing his league-leading total to 94 in 82.1 innings.
“I didn’t have any fastball command,” he said. “The weather was horrible. The ball kept getting wet. Rain was flying everywhere. It was a dogfight.”
A day later, starter Ross Vance couldn’t hold a 5-0 lead and allowed six runs in 4.2 innings. Freshman Braden Zarbnisky relieved, and Zarbnisky, who has been WVU’s mid-week starter during this stretch and bats leadoff when he doesn’t pitch, allowed one run in 3.1 innings. WVU scored eight runs with Zarbnisky in the game.
“In the middle innings, nobody was putting up zeroes,” Mazey said. “Both teams were scoring a lot of runs.
Anybody who could put up some zeroes was probably going to win the game.”
On Sunday, freshman Michael Grove couldn’t make his start, and Connor Dotson had only a little time to prepare for his first start of the season. He allowed four earned runs in six innings, and WVU scored seven runs in the first two innings to help him get comfortable.
One of three relievers Mazey used was Jackson Stigman, who is from Austin, Texas. He pitched in every game against his hometown team and allowed one hit in five scoreless innings during the weekend.
“It’s all starting to click right now, and we couldn’t feel any better than we do right now,” said sophomore Kyle Davis, who homered in Saturday’s win. “Things haven’t gone our way at times this season, but it’s really good to see us clicking on all cylinders. We’ve been saying all year we’re a good team and it was just a matter of time until we started peaking. I think that’s right now.”
WVU plays host to Maryland (25-21) at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday and has its last home series over the weekend with William & Mary. The final four games are on the road, beginning with a game at Pitt and concluding with a three-game series at No. 8 Texas Tech (37-13, 17-4), which is in first place in the conference.
“We’ve got to take what we’ve done so far and run with it,” Davis said. “We can’t get complacent.”
“We’ve got a young team that works really hard and plays really hard,” Mazey said. “When you do that, good things will eventually happen for you. This game has a way of rewarding you when you deserve it. The way we went after it when things weren’t going well and we kept grinding and fighting and stayed positive and kept practicing, I think we deserved to get rewarded for it, and that’s why we’re playing so well right now.”
http://www.wvgazettemail.com/sports/20160508/wvu-baseball-stays-hot-sweeps-texas
