GRANVILLE – That thud you may have heard coming out of Kendrick Family Ballpark on Friday night was WVU’s chances of winning a Big 12 championship hitting a brick wall.
The pinging noise you heard was the reason why.
TCU’s Preston Gamster, Kyuss Gargett and Noah Franco all hit solo home runs – a total of 1,191 feet of them – and Horned Frogs starter Lance Davis hurled a complete-game shutout in a 4-0 victory.
The loss – just the second time the ninth-ranked Mountaineers (36-13, 20-9 Big 12) have been held scoreless this season – coupled with Kansas’ 7-6 victory against BYU on Friday night ended WVU’s chances at going back-to-back in winning a Big 12 title.
“How can you not watch it?” WVU head coach Steve Sabins said prior to the Kansas game going final. “I really have learned over the course of years to not get obsessed with it. I’m not living and dying with 3-2 umpire calls on the outside corner hoping for strikes. The season is too long and there are so many scenarios.
“I’ve been in those spots where you’re a bubble team and you’re rooting for George Mason to beat Virginia or whatever conference tournament there is and you’re sweating it out. I learned that my job is already stressful, so I don’t need to sweat out these other people’s games. I’ll watch it, but won’t get obsessed with it.”
WVU’s offense, on this night, wasn’t obsessed with hitting, either, as Davis – a redshirt freshman – went all nine innings and dominated the Mountaineers.
“Got to give a lot of credit to Lance Davis. He obviously threw a heck of a game,” Sabins said. “He kept us off balance and we never got anything going offensively. We couldn’t gain any footing.”
With 108 pitches, Davis held the Mountaineers to just three hits. The closest WVU came to scoring was in the third inning when Ben Lumsden and Matt Ineich were on base with two outs, but Gavin Kelly struck out to end the inning.
Davis had six strikeouts in all. He walked one and his 31 batters faced were just four over the minimum.
“Essentially he throws 93 to 96 and there’s a lot of run on the fastball,” Sabins said. “Then, he throws a 91 mile-per-hour cutter, so you have two firm pitches that are going two opposite ways.
“If hitters try to sit in the middle, you basically cap the cutters and get jammed by fastballs.”
On the other side was WVU’s Maxx Yehl, who had been spectacular last week in his own complete-game victory over Kansas, but finally showed signs of being human.
He gave up two solo shots to Gamster and Gargett in the second inning – an inning in which he also recorded three strikeouts. Yehl (7-2) pitched 6 2/3 innings and struck out nine. He allowed four hits, but none after that second inning. He threw 116 pitches.
“Maxx Yehl was competitive,” Sabins said. “He gave up a couple of home runs, which he hasn’t done all season. He competed and gave us a chance to win. You go 6.2 innings with nine punchouts and four hits, you’re going to be in every game.”
TCU (33-19, 17-12 Big 12), fighting for its own life in getting an at-large bid for the NCAA tournament, also saw Franco go deep in the eighth inning off WVU reliever Dawson Montesa for a 3-0 lead. Nolan Traeger also scored on a wild pitch in the inning for the final score.
About the only good news for WVU on this day came from about 900 miles south, where UCF was knocked off by Kansas State, 5-4. That solidified the No. 2 seed in next week’s Big 12 tournament for the Mountaineers, who saw their eight-game winning streak come to an end.
“Last year was the opposite. We were limping into this situation,” Sabins said. “We were making lineup changes. We were scratching and clawing just to try and gain a little bit of momentum.
“For me, we’ve given up three earned runs in two games and won some ungodly number in a row. I’ll take it. Let’s move on and flush it and see if we can go win a series (on Saturday) like we’ve been doing all year.”
