MORGANTOWN — With an opportunity to move into a first-place tie in the Big 12 standings, West Virginia’s offense took an unfortunate step back Friday night.
No. 23 UCF used a combination of five pitchers to shut down and shut out the 13th-ranked Mountaineers, 5-0, inside Kendrick Family Ballpark, the first time WVU (20-6, 7-3 Big 12) was held scoreless since the end of the regular season last year by Kansas.
“I don’t think our offense was in a great position to be successful tonight,” WVU head coach Steve Sabins said. “We just didn’t have good at-bats. We didn’t do what we do consistently. From my perspective, it’s like, ‘You’ve got to get back to work,’ ”
UCF (19-8, 9-1) now has a 1 1/2-game lead over Kansas and a two-game lead over the Mountaineers heading into today’s second game of the series, which is scheduled for 2 p.m. Game 3 is scheduled for noon on Sunday.
“Their arms are definitely good,” WVU outfielder Armani Guzman said. “They threw a lot of strikes. They threw chase pitches when they needed to. They commanded the zone well.”
How well? WVU, which fell to 2-2 against Top 25 competition this season, only had two runners reach third base. Of the 138 pitches UCF pitches threw, 86 went for strikes. Only one WVU batter was walked and the Mountaineers were held to a season-low three hits.
“They had great at-bats and played incredible infield defense,” Sabins said of the Knights, who beat WVU for the first time as a Big 12 opponent. “They made very limited mistakes and threw strikes.”
The game took a scary turn at the end of the first inning, when UCF starting pitcher Braden Smith took a 105 mph line drive to his face off the bat of WVU’s Sean Smith. Sean Smith was still thrown out at first to end the inning, but then the game was delayed as medical officials rushed to Braden Smith’s aid.
The UCF junior eventually rose to his feet to a standing ovation with a towel covering his right eye and was carted off on a motorized cart.
“That was a scary moment in the first inning,” Sabins said. “I’ve heard he’s doing well. He was talking, maybe had a couple of fractures in the face. I’ve seen a few of those things end up a whole lot worse. Certainly it was scary in the moment.”
WVU starting pitcher Dawson Montesa (3-4) allowed five hits and three runs over four innings. Ian Korn also pitched four innings, allowed five hits and two runs. Both gave up a solo home run to UCF right fielder Andrew Williamson.
UCF relief pitcher Max Murray came in for Smith and threw three shutout innings to pick up the win. Kevin Schonboom, Kris Sosnowski and Evan Jones combined to allow just one hit and no walks.
“There’s probably a lot of factors,” Sabins said about WVU’s lack of offense. “It was not like us. I thought we chased. I thought our bat speed looked slow tonight. In general, I don’t think our guys physically looked great.
“These guys have proven to be animals and they want to compete and they want to win. We’ll make some adjustments. For me, when I was watching them, their bodies weren’t moving explosively tonight.”
