MORGANTOWN — West Virginia arrived in Omaha, Neb. for the College World Series on Wednesday.
It arrived after taking the path as the 16th and final seed awarded for the NCAA tournament, yet the Mountaineers’ road to Omaha was essentially layered in feathers and cotton balls – it was rather soft.
At this point of the season, the phrase “it doesn’t get any easier” is supposed to be tossed about with ease. You will not hear those words spoken about WVU (45-15), when it takes the field at 2 p.m. Friday … against Troy … a mid-major with 30 losses on the season, who ran its own opportunistic path to the World Series.
And this is the point where college baseball pundits scream from the top of their keyboards how the NCAA needs to reseed the tournament after each round and certainly how the tournament needs to be reseeded heading into the World Series.
Not that I’ve ever been asked to speak for the entire state of West Virginia, but we’ve got just two words for those who believe the Mountaineers gamed the system: Get lost.
The Mountaineers have absolutely nothing to apologize for.
Now, honestly, there is a strong case to be had for those on the other side of the fence.
In winning the Morgantown Regional, WVU did so with two all-time memorable performances. There was a ninth-inning rally that saw the Mountaineers score five runs when they trailed by three. Paul Schoenfeld’s two-run blast to right field is maybe the most viral WVU moment to hit the internet since couches started to be set ablaze.
A day later, Armani Guzman’s base hit in the 10th inning gave WVU a walk-off win to the super regionals.
Those wins came against Kentucky. True, the Wildcats play in that Gold-almighty conference known as the SEC, but were nothing better than the 13th place team from that league. For those who argue the SEC gets too much respect – and it does – there was a great argument to be had that the Wildcats didn’t even belong in the tournament to begin with.
That’s who WVU beat to advance to the super regionals, a team that maybe didn’t even belong in the tournament.
What word do you want to use to describe the next round? Lucky? Fortuitous? Fluky? They all apply. WVU was supposed to face No. 1 seed UCLA in the super regionals, meaning a trip across the country to face the best team in the land.
Instead, WVU faced the upset darling from Cal Poly. The Mustangs weren’t even the team that beat UCLA, having won that regional only after St. Mary’s beat UCLA twice.
So, now it was the mid-major Mustangs who had to fly across three time zones to Morgantown. They were playing in the school’s first super regional and looked every bit like a team that wasn’t ready for the moment.
WVU scored 29 runs in the two games. Cal Poly scored three.
And after all of that, there’s no Georgia or Texas or Alabama waiting in the wings to face WVU in the first game of the World Series. It’s Troy (38-30), a member of the Sun Belt Conference, who lost to, of all people, Marshall during the regular season.
So, we get your gripes and understand your rolling of the eyes when WVU’s path to Omaha comes up in discussion.
We just don’t give a damn, because if there is any athletic department in this country who deserves to catch a little bit of a break, it’s WVU. To be sure, the school’s athletic history is filled with not catching them.
Generations passed before the school celebrated its first trip to college football’s national championship game. When it finally happened in 1989, star quarterback Major Harris got hurt on the third play of the game against Notre Dame.
To this day, you will find no one in the state who doesn’t believe WVU got jobbed out of playing for the 1994 national championship.
It waited 51 years after Jerry West’s graduation to reach another Final Four in men’s basketball, only to have star Da’Sean Butler go down to a knee injury against Duke in the 2010 national semifinals.
The women’s basketball team can tell you first hand what several beatdowns from Geno Auriemma and UConn feel like. The baseball team, too, took several uppercuts to the chin – remember last year’s super regional at LSU? – before it finally reached the ultimate summit the sport provides.
After all of that, WVU deserved a bit of a break. Others may not agree, but the Mountaineers absolutely do not care.
“The Mountaineers are going to Omaha,” WVU head coach Steve Sabins said. “It’s been 135 years in the making, so it’s pretty special being a part of something that’s never been done in our history.”
