COLUMN: WVU's regional baseball title goes deeper than just a voyage into the next round

Dominion Post

3 days ago

MORGANTOWN — Left for dead for three consecutive games, there may not be enough words to accurately describe the jolt of life the WVU baseball team just put into the school's overall athletic reputation.
We begin with your stat of the day: The 24th-ranked Mountaineers (44-14) scored 26 runs to win the Clemson, S.C. Regional in three games. Twelve of those runs came in the eighth inning or later.
All three wins were comebacks, including Sunday night's 13-12 victory against Kentucky to clinch a trip to the super regionals.
WVU STATS
'I think this team has been doubted throughout the season,' WVU head coach Steve Sabins said. 'They're the most resilient bunch of kids I've had the pleasure of coaching.'
Resilient is one way of putting it. There are certainly others.
Clutch and heroic come to mind. Unbelievable and astonishing are others.
It's here that WVU catcher Logan Sauve relayed a terrific story.
Trailing Kentucky, 11-7, in the sixth inning, WVU first baseman Grant Hussey sent a ball to the wall with the bases loaded.
The game should have been tied right there.
Whether it was just fate or a simply a stiff breeze blowing in, Hussey's blast fell just inches shy of a grand slam and safely into Kentucky outfielder's Cole Hage's glove to end the inning.
Dejection could have set in right there. Instead, Sauve turned to teammate Armani Guzman, 'I told Armani after that inning that we were going to win this game,' Sauve said. 'There was never any doubt throughout our whole team, throughout the whole game, and really the whole weekend.'
The WVU athletic department needed this like a thirsty man needs water, there is no doubt about that.
This 2024-25 school year has not been short of headlines, but so many of them for the wrong reasons.
Football coach was fired. Men's basketball team was snubbed from the NCAA tournament and then lost its head coach to Indiana.
Even this baseball team that is being celebrated today was headed down a dark path over the final month of the regular season.
It lost to Marshall in a walk-off, which would have been the worst kind of gut punch, except the Mountaineers exceeded that by doing the same thing against Pitt a week later.
They were shut out twice in three games against Kansas … in Morgantown … when WVU needed just one win to truly celebrate winning the Big 12 title.
It got boat raced in the Big 12 tournament against Arizona.
If the program was doubted, as Sabins said, it certainly earned those doubts.
And fundraisers within the WVU athletic department were about to go out to potential donors with hat in hand with very little to sell.
Hey, we're bringing back glory with Rich Rodriguez as the new football coach.
Well, you know how well that pitch would go over for about half of the donor and fan base.
Those same WVU fundraisers now have a baseball team that, for a second consecutive season, is one of only 16 teams still alive for a national championship.
'I told Armani after that inning that we were going to win this game.'
Sauve's words were meant for just that one game on a June night in the state of South Carolina, but did the Mountaineers actually wind up attaining a much deeper gratification by winning the regional?
As in, did Sabins — and the work done before him by former head coach Randy Mazey — just put the Mountaineers on equal footing with the sport's elite?
'I think it would be fair to say we're a top 16 program in the country, for the last two years, at least,' Sabins said. 'I think we've built something really special in Morgantown. We've had 12 big leaguers in the last 10 years. We won an outright title in the Big 12 and we've won two Big 12 titles in the last three years.'
A year ago, the Mountaineers won the Tucson, Ariz. Regional without having to play the host school.
Not so this time.
It not only beat Clemson in front of a raucous, hostile and sold-out atmosphere, but also took down Kentucky — from the mighty, mighty SEC, where it just means more — twice.
'More than just myself, to the whole team, it shows we all have it,' said Guzman, who was named the region's MVP after going 8 for 12 with six RBIs in three games. 'I was a guy who didn't play the last month and a half and I was here in this position. I think it's a big confidence boost for each guy.'
WVU's performance was the kind of boost that commands attention. Not just from you and me in the state of West Virginia, but to the entire college baseball world.
A major hurdle was cleared Sunday night. The kind that so many up-and-coming programs — in any sport — approach but only a rare few overcome.
It's not a far stretch right now to say that the university that proudly boasts an alumni roster with the likes of Jerry West, Major Harris, Sam Huff, 'Hot' Rod Hundley and Da'Sean Butler is quickly developing into a baseball school.
'To say that our program is in the upper echelon and the best of the best when it comes to Division I baseball would not be an understatement,' Sabins said. 'I think that was proven this weekend.'