MORGANTOWN — In the end, maybe it was just unfortunate math that calculated two unconventional endings for the WVU baseball program.
More to the point, the Mountaineers finished the 2025 regular season by getting swept by Kansas, yet still hoisted the Big 12 trophy and earned the No. 1 seed in the Big 12 tournament.
A year later, the ninth-ranked Mountaineers (37-13, 21-9 Big 12) set a program record for conference wins and won eight of their final nine league games just to finish a game behind the Jayhawks in second place.
“Couldn’t be more excited for our kids to clip off 21 wins,” WVU head coach Steve Sabins said. “Last year, we won the league outright with 19. To be able to do that and then come back and have a better year says a lot about our team, the staff and the players.”
Having come up just shy of a second Big 12 title, what the Mountaineers do have is momentum.
In all, WVU enters the Big 12 tournament on Thursday in Surprise, Ariz having won 9 of its last 10 games, which includes a three-game sweep of the Jayhawks. There is no other team in the Big 12 who matches that type of success heading into the conference tournament.
Minus the trophy and the top seed, the Mountaineers’ situation leading into the postseason is in a different world than it was a year ago.
“This is the best team and the culture just keeps on growing,” WVU infielder Brodie Kresser said. “The guys are awesome. Our offense is crazy. Like, anybody can hit anywhere in our lineup.”
WVU is now the No. 2 seed and won’t play until 7:30 p.m. Thursday in the single-elimination tournament. Unless either Utah or Kansas State pulls off an upset, the Mountaineers will likely see seventh-seeded TCU in the quarterfinals. WVU took two of three against the Horned Frogs to end the regular season, with the Mountaineers scoring three runs in the eighth inning to win the deciding game.
TCU will also have outfielder Sawyer Strosnider back in its lineup for the Big 12 tournament. Strosnider – the conference’s preseason player of the year – sat out the series against WVU with an ankle injury.
The ultimate question is what made the difference for WVU? How did things suddenly turn sour at the end of the regular season in 2025 only for the Mountaineers to rewrite that script a year later?
It is a question so many coaches have been asked and one that rarely can be answered.
“If I knew, I would get paid more,” Sabins said. “There are so many different reasons, but every year, you just try and get better. You try and do things a little bit better. We have maturity, experience and staff calmness.
“You get a little more comfortable in those moments and it always falls back on culture and the kids. It always ends up being about the players and how motivated they are to win and the confidence they bring.”
If nothing else, this WVU team does not lack in confidence this season.
“We have one of the best pitchers in the country in Maxx Yehl,” WVU reliever Reese Bassinger said. “We probably have the second-best pitcher in the country in Chansen Cole. We have Ian Korn, who can throw hundreds of pitches.
“It’s a team built on picking each other up. On days that we click, we’re firing on all cylinders. I feel like we’re never out of a game.”
The difference in the Big 12 tournament is teams go from playing three-game series to now playing in a single-elimination tournament.
That likely doesn’t change much in terms of starting lineups, but it will bring into question how Sabins handles the WVU pitching staff.
“Us being built up to win a series will set us up to be successful,” Sabins said. “It’ll be interesting, though, because a lot of times you need to win two games. In a tournament, it’s always, how do you win this game now? How will we use our third or fourth starter? What’s their best role, because you don’t want to look up and say we didn’t use (Dawson) Montesa in the postseason. Do we put (Ian) Korn back in the bullpen? There’s a lot of things we have to figure out to get our guys in the best situation.
“With this team, it’s going to be a little more difficult than in the past. We have three of the top pitchers in the league and bullpen arms with experience. It’s going to be a little bit interesting how we handle our pitching in the postseason.”
