Stop me if you have heard this story once before: West Virginia jumps ahead of the competition and takes an early lead, but crumbles underneath the pressure and suffers defeat after an opponent mounts a late-game rally.
No, you don't need to check your calendar -- it's May, and basketball season for West Virginia has been wrapped up approximately two months. However, a problem that plagued the Mountaineers on the hardwood has now drifted across programs to the baseball diamond.
West Virginia dropped it's second Big 12 series of the season on Sunday as they fell to Kansas State in a 14-9 loss -- but after trailing early, the Mountaineers entered the bottom of the eighth inning leading 8-7 before giving up a seven-run inning.
It isn't the first time such a scenario has happened to the Mountaineers this season -- in fact, it wasn't even the first time during the series against Kansas State.
On Friday, the Mountaineer held a 7-2 lead over the Wildcats entering the bottom of the ninth inning. However, Kansas State managed a six-run performance to save the game and pull off the win to open the series.
And over the past few weeks, this has been a problem consistently plaguing West Virginia -- against arch rival Pitt in The Backyard Brawl, the Mountaineers entered the bottom of the ninth holding a 9-5 led before giving up five runs and suffering a 10-9 loss. The week before that, a neutral site contest against in-state rival Marshall saw WVU take a 3-1 lead early, and the game was tied at 6-6 entering the bottom of the ninth before a late throwing error allowed Marshall a 7-6 victory.
Adding it altogether, that makes four games with blown lead due to collapses in the eighth and ninth innings in just 12 days -- less than two weeks total.
Make no mistake about it -- West Virginia baseball is still in the middle of a historic season, and they are far from finished. The Mountaineers have already tied the program record with 40 wins this season, and a few more are likely on the horizon.
WVU needs just one victory during next weekend's home series against Kansas, or just one loss by Arizona State in their regular season finale series, to clinch an outright Big 12 Championship. That will set them up quite nicely for the Big 12 Tournament, and they're a lock for the NCAA Tournament at this point.
But it's hard to look at the recent string of late-game collapses and not be concerned that it's an issue that could cause problems for the Mountaineers come the post-season if they don't get their bullpen figured out and find some late-game resolve when opponents attempt a rally.
West Virginia fans, long used to not having much to cheer for after football and basketball season wrap up, have begun to become college baseball fans in recent years as the program has slowly built themselves into a national contender.
With this season the most impressive yet for the Mountaineers, the WVU fanbase is watching with a close eye -- and after such a strong year, it's not a stretch to say that fans and those within the program have both started to imagine a potential summer trip to Omaha for the program's first-ever College World Series appearance.
But unless West Virginia finds a way to combat this pattern of the late-game collapse, those dreams will likely remain a "what if" for Mountaineer fans. But whether the team can find the fix or not is something we'll all have to wait to find out.