WVU baseball is not having a great week on the diamond.
The Mountaineers suffered back-to-back losses to cap their weekend trip to Cincinnati after it took extra innings for them to capture the opening game. The loss compounds an absolutely brutal 23-1 loss to Backyard Brawl rivals Pitt on Tuesday in front of a home crowd at Kendrick Family Ballpark, moving them to 1-3 on the week,
Just a brutal week for WVU baseball. Cincinnati takes the series.
— Spencer Ripchik (@RipchikSpencer) April 26, 2026
And this comes following WVU suffered a 10-7 loss to the Houston Cougars, the last-place team in the Big 12, to open the previous weekend's conference series. And while they would end up winning the series, the loss to such a dismal opponent did no favors for the team's RPI ranking.
And this might not just be an aberration: as close followers of WVU's program can look back at last season and see similar struggles around the same point on the schedule that raises concerns about how well a Steve Sabins-led team can close out the season.
Does Steve Sabins struggle later in the season?
The Mountaineers started the season 13-0 and 33-4 last season, which was Sabins's first year at the helm of the program.
But then, on April 22, the Mountaineers suffered a midweek loss to Penn State, which would kickoff a streak of three consecutive midweek game losses (the next two also coming to rivals in Marshall and Pitt), before the Mountaineers would close the season losing five of their six final games, giving away their final two Big 12 series and nearly the Big 12 regular season championship.
This year, the Mountaineers started off 20-5 before dropping their first Big 12 series to UCF at the start of April. Then, the Houston loss came on April 17, the Pitt loss on April 21, and now a series loss this past weekend are making the homestretch of this season look an awful lot like last year's. And WVU must still has a weekend series schedule with two of the top five teams in the Big 12.
Now, last season ended as the winningest in WVU history, with a second consecutive Super Regional appearance. And while a strong postseason that perhaps sees a change to the team's recent fortunes in the Big 12 Tournament and another Super Regional appearance would likely lay any major concerns to rest, it's not exactly comforting to see this familiar trend rearing it's ugly head for a second season in a row.
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