MORGANTOWN — The comment came from ESPN college baseball analyst Mike Rooney well before top-seeded Kansas broke the game open in the seventh inning for a 9-0 victory on Saturday against West Virginia in the Big 12 tournament finals.
“When you look at West Virginia, they just don’t have any holes,” Rooney surmised.
Beg to differ. As the Mountaineers (39-14) head back to Morgantown with eyes on being named one of the 16 regional hosts sometime Sunday, they will do so having shown their most glaring crater-sized hole.
WVU needed some pop in its lineup against the Jayhawks inside Surprise Stadium in Surprise, Ariz.
No surprise, the Mountaineers just don’t have it.
Before the game became a blowout late – as Kansas hit three home runs in that seventh inning to seal its first Big 12 tournament since 2006 – WVU had the bases loaded twice. Both times there was just one out.
Not a single run was scored.
Timely hitting is nice, and WVU has had plenty of that during this season. Manufacturing runs (small ball, as they say) is a good thing, and the Mountaineers can certainly do that, too.
WVU is just one of five teams in the Big 12 to have a team batting average of .300 or better. The Mountaineers can steal bases. They have the best pitching staff in the conference, by far the best defense, too.
Put all of that together, and it makes sense for Rooney to say what he said.
But, as the season now turns to its most dramatic portion, the teams who have power hitters to spare generally shine the brightest.
LSU won the national title last season by scoring 28 runs in two games against WVU in the super regional and then added 20 more in four games at the College World Series.
Yes, LSU could also pitch and play defense, but chicks dig the long ball, as the commercial once said, and the Tigers had plenty of power hitters to dig.
WVU’s power outage has it dead last in home runs in the Big 12. Sooner or later, that is going to become an issue in the NCAA tournament. It was a major issue against the Jayhawks on Saturday.
You might have seen during the broadcast that WVU’s Gavin Kelly is projected as the No. 1 overall pick in the 2027 MLB amateur draft by Baseball America. He is a fantastic player with great athleticism and speed and baseball skills oozing out of his pours, but he is not the most feared hitter in the Big 12.
WVU’s lineup as a whole is terrific, but not feared. That cost the Mountaineers dearly against the Jayhawks (42-16), who continued to force ground balls and short pop-ups that turned into three inning-ending double plays simply because WVU hitters couldn’t get the ball out of the infield when it mattered most.
OK, so what happens next? At some point Sunday, the 16 regional hosts will be announced and then the entire 64-team field is announced at noon on Monday on ESPN2.
“We expect seven bids to the NCAA tournament and two teams will be hosting, Kansas and West Virginia,” Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark predicted after the game.
WVU last hosted a NCAA regional in 2019, and it was a wild atmosphere inside Kendrick Family Ballpark. The Mountaineers are 18th in the RPI following the loss, while Kansas is 19th. Both teams have posted great arguments to be a regional host.
If both aren’t a regional host, there will be some major questions the selection committee will have to answer.
It now becomes a question of how much damage the Mountaineers can do in the NCAA tournament.
To be sure, Saturday was just a bad day. That’s baseball. Get shut out one game and then come back the next and put up a 10-spot. It happens all the time in baseball, and there’s no doubt WVU head coach Steve Sabins won’t get his players regrouped and ready to go.
There will be more great pitching and defense for the Mountaineers to show off. Kelly will do his thing. There will be comebacks, drama and plenty of intrigue on display in Morgantown.
Getting to a third consecutive super regional, that’s a truly historic possibility for WVU.
Just don’t expect it to come with a display of home runs and multiple shots to the gap. That’s just not WVU’s game, which it unfortunately proved against Kansas.
