MORGANTOWN, W.Va. –
Randy Mazey is hopeful his West Virginia University baseball team is jelling at the right time. The Mountaineers' three-game sweep of Baylor last weekend put them at 14 victories in conference play with nine league games left.
"We are in a good spot, and I'll take where we're at, but we've still got a lot of work to do," he said following Sunday's 13-4 victory over Baylor.
Just a week ago, West Virginia was trying to figure out what happened at Texas Tech when the Red Raiders claimed all three games of that weekend series by scores of 15-2, 6-4 and 3-1.
"We didn't sugarcoat it last weekend," Mazey explained. "We were awful and sometimes that's what you need is a good slap in the face occasionally to wake you up. That's what that sweep last weekend did because we weren't the same team this weekend that we were that weekend.
"Those sweeps can serve you well if you approach it right," he added.
Last year, West Virginia won a share of the Big 12 regular season title with 15 victories (the most by any WVU team since joining the league in 2013) and made the NCAA regionals for the third time under Mazey. The veteran coach is now 43-26 in conference play over the last three years and is seeking one more NCAA Tournament bid in his final campaign coaching the Mountaineers.
West Virginia is currently tied with Oklahoma State in second place, one game behind league leader Oklahoma in the conference standings with three weekends left in the regular season. The 16
th-ranked Cowboys own the tiebreaker over the Mountaineers by virtual of their series win in Morgantown in late March.
Should West Virginia and 23
rd-ranked Oklahoma finish tied, the Mountaineers would own the tiebreaker over the Sooners.
West Virginia, at 26-16 overall, is right in the thick of things for another NCAA bid with an RPI of 34 and games remaining tonight against No. 93 Pitt, at No. 69 Cincinnati this weekend, at home against No. 162 Penn State for a mid-week game next week and then season-ending conference games at home against No. 31 Kansas State and on the road at No. 38 TCU.
"When you play a long season and you travel a lot, that's the battle, man, trying to figure out who to put into the game at what time and how much you rest them, and you've got to win every game while you are doing it," Mazey explained.
Mazey has coached long enough to understand the big picture and he realizes that sometimes it takes a while to get things where you want them.
In 1996, West Virginia was one game under .500 on April 24 following a two-game sweep at Virginia Tech. WVU had also dropped a hard-fought weekend series at St. John's and lost a close game to Pitt, putting its postseason hopes in jeopardy.
But the Mountaineers, behind the emergence of No. 2 pitcher Chris Enochs, went out to South Bend, Indiana, and swept a double-header from Notre Dame and followed with a double-header sweep of Connecticut to qualify for the Big East Tournament.
West Virginia remained hot with non-conference wins over Richmond and St. Louis, and then got a couple of big victories to lead off the Big East Tournament. WVU outlasted Notre Dame in a 10-8 slugfest, and then Enochs nearly no-hit Rutgers in game two to advance in the winner's bracket.
A long rain delay that eventually forced the St. John's game to be concluded the following day gave WVU the extra day it needed to bring Enochs back in relief to lock up its only Big East Tournament title two days later.
West Virginia finished the year winning 11 of its last 13 games to qualify for the NCAA regionals, where it won its first two games against Tennessee and Georgia Southern.
Mazey is familiar with that Mountaineer squad because he was also there coaching Charleston Southern.
In all, Mazey has led seven teams to NCAA regionals, including three at West Virginia in 2017, 2019 and 2023.
He believes he's got another team good enough to get there this year.
"When you are with them every day sometimes it's hard to look at our team objectively," Mazey noted. "There hasn't been a coach we've played a series against that hasn't come up to me and said something to the effect, "You guys have got a good team.' When other people say that about you sometimes you don't see that on the inside what people see on the outside.
"Enough people have told me that now that I'm starting to believe them," he said.
The 1996 team got hot at the right time and Mazey is hopeful last weekend's three-game sweep of Baylor will be the catalyst for another memorable season-ending run this year.
