MORGANTOWN — Marques Inman already has three home runs in his last three games.
Nothing can ever take that streak away from the WVU first baseman, but doing it four games in a row would forever have great meaning to him.
“That would be something special, for sure,” he said.
Homering in a fourth straight game for Inman would mean the fourth came at Pittsburgh’s PNC Park, where the Mountaineers (13-15) will play Penn State (7-18), at 6:30 p.m. today, April 10.
It’s the second consecutive year the two schools will meet at the home of the Pittsburgh Pirates. WVU knocked off Penn State, 4-2, last season, a game that Inman missed because of a knee injury.
It’s an opportunity that WVU head coach Randy Mazey looks forward to and hopes will continue.
“It’ll be a blast,” Mazey said. “We were all talking, and even if it’s going to rain or if we get rained out, we’ll just go and sit in the locker room and let the guys walk in the dugout. It’s a great opportunity.”
Pirates president Frank Coonelly is a Penn State graduate, which helped start the series at PNC.
“It’s something I hope we can do every year,” Mazey said. “Our guys really look forward to it.”
The Nittany Lions have lost seven straight and are tied with Northwestern at the bottom of the Big Ten standings.
As for Inman, his batting average has improved to .289 on the season with four home runs and 17 RBIs. He was 6-for-8 with the three home runs in the weekend three-game series against UNLV and was named the Big 12’s Player of the Week on Monday.
“I’ve been having good at-bats all season,” Inman said. “It’s good to see some balls leave the yard every now and then and find a rhythm.”
That wasn’t the case earlier in the season, when he was trying to get back from a torn ACL from last season.
“It does a lot for my confidence when he’s in there,” Mazey said. “He was swinging the bat really well early on. He was hitting line drives right at people. We told him to stick with it and not look at his batting average, because [a low batting average] can be the biggest confidence killer in the world.
“He kept grinding out his at-bats and now he’s swinging the bat as well as he has all season.”
Mazey said the one trick for college players playing in a pro park was getting past the “awe” factor.
“I think there was last year and hopefully that’s out of our system now,” Mazey said. “Most of our guys who will be in the lineup played in that game last year. Hopefully that looking around and being in awe of our surroundings will be out of their system and we can just get down to playing baseball.”
