After winning the regular season Big 12 Baseball Championship, West Virginia entered the Big 12 Baseball Tournament this week with hopes of capturing their first-ever championship at the tournament -- but the week did not end as the Mountaineers would have liked.
The start of the tournament looked very promising for the program, despite WVU entering the week having dropped six of their last seven games. That glimmer of hope would not last long at all, though, and the Mountaineers suffered a collapse and were manhandled 12-1 by the Arizona Wildcats in their semifinal match-up on Friday.
A day removed from witnessing Griffin Kirn turn in a complete game while the offense racked up double-digit runs, WVU's performance was much uglier in their second and final game of the tournament.
The Mountaineers sent eight pitchers to the mound on Friday and were able to push just one run across the plate, their bats silenced by Wildcat pitchers.
Jack Kartsonas got the starting nod at pitcher in the second game of the tournament for WVU and was immediately roughed up early. Wildcat star Mason White wasted no time getting to Kartsonas early, as he jumped on a pitch in the first inning, driving it over the fence. White’s home run in the first was after Kartsonas got two very quick outs and looked to be settling in very early. However, that would not be the case for WVU.
Arizona added another run in the third inning, with a two-out single scoring White. But the fifth inning is where things truly blew up for Kartsonas and the Mountaineers, as Arizona pushed across three more runs thanks to White’s second home run of the day. Scoring at least two runs in every inning from the fifth through the ninth -- excluding a scoreless eighth inning -- Arizona ran away with the game.
WVU’s lone run came in the seventh inning when Chase Swain was subbed into the game after not getting the start on Thursday or Friday. Swain would hit a single to score Armani Guzman, who also entered the game in the seventh as a pinch hitter. At that point in the game, it seemed like Sabins was just trying to get some bench players an opportunity to hit.
Now WVU will await the NCAA Tournament Selection Show on Monday, May 26th, where they will find out what seed and regional they will be placed in for the postseason. If the Mountaineers were able to make the Big 12 Conference Championship game, there would be a chance that they could have made an argument to be a host site for regional action. However, with the blowout loss to Arizona, the dream of hosting a regional in Morgantown has been crushed.