The No. 17 West Virginia Mountaineers faced off with No. 22 Arizona State in a Top 25 battle to decide one of the biggest early-season Big 12 weekend series showdowns on Sunday night, which was broadcast nationally on ESPN2.
And while the broadcast was showcasing to the world what the Mountaineers bring on the diamond, the broadcast team welcomed club manager Steve Sabins for a mid-game interview part way through the evening. And during the discussion, Sabins made a bold claim about his program and their claim to a nearby recruiting territory that will put a smile on the faces of WVU fans.
JJ Wetherholt, Gavin Kelly demonstrate WVU baseball's excellence in recruiting Pittsburgh region
The broadcast team highlighted JJ Wetherholt, who has been making headlines this weekend for his hot debut in the MLB with a solo home run and a walk-off single in a pair of wins for the Cardinals. They also brought up in the same breadth Gavin Kelly, the West Virginia utility man who played catcher against the Sun Devils for the Mountaineers and is widely considered a high-level MLB prospect.
And what do the two players have in common beside their connection to the Mountaineers? Well, they're both from the Pittsburgh metro area – with Kelly coming from Pittsburgh Central Catholic and Wetherholt from Mars Area High School. The broadcast team went as far.
That's not insignificant, considering that WVU's biggest historical rival is the Pitt Panthers, a rivalry that runs deep in all sports for the Mountaineers. And when the boadcast team jokingly asked Sabins about keeping a timeshare in Pittsburgh, he made it crystal clear that he thinks his program owns that area as a recruiting territory.
"That's West Virginia land right there," Sabins said. "It needs to be know that's a West Virginia recruiting area."
With Rich Rodriguez and the football team also adding four-star recruit and National High School Player of the Year Matt Sieg from Fort Cherry High School in the Pittsburgh area this offseason, it's becoming clear that multiple WVU programs are interested in further establishing their footprint in Pitt's backyard. And so far, it seems to be succeeding.