MORGANTOWN — Postseason baseball is always a very different animal from the regular season. The slate is wiped clean, everybody starts 0-0, and often it’s the team that gets the hottest that moves on.
Last night at Mylan Park, University coach Donovan Riggleman tried to warn his team about Buckhannon-Upshur, the Hawks’ opponent in the Region I, Section 2 semifinals. He tried to get them to ignore the 10-2 drubbing his team put on the Buccaneers just a few weeks ago.
It didn’t help, as the hot-hitting Bucs scored in all but one inning in a 11-5 win.
“We talked to them about the fact that B-U would come ready to play,” Riggleman explained after the game, “but it seemed like we lost our aggressiveness, both at the plate and in the field. And it cost us.”
The Buccaneers plated single runs in the first two innings off UHS starter Perry Lillard, who was victimized by some sloppy defense and a series of infield hits. The Hawks left the bases loaded in the first, and were about to repeat in the second, but an infield pop turned into a two-run error, and a balk gave them a brief 3-2 lead after two.
But the Bucs responded with three in the top of the third — the big blow being a long double to straight away center field by B-U catcher Casey Hamner — to regain the lead they’d never relinquish.
Starter Logan Whitehair kept the University hitters off-balance with an effective mix of his fastball, curve and cutter — facing just one over the minimum and putting up three consecutive zeros on the scoreboard.
In the fifth, a booming shot from Hamner made it 7-3, and the Bucs tacked on a pair of runs in both the sixth and seventh off the UHS bullpen to put the game on ice. The Hawks scratched out two runs in the sixth to close within four, but could draw no closer.
After the game, B-U coach Adam Squires credited his pitcher for taking care of business against the Hawks.
“Logan has been our best all year,” he said, “giving us a chance to win just about every time out. His control was a little shaky early, but he coaxed a lot of ground balls and weak contact. And Casey was super with the bat tonight. He really did a great job of sitting back, timing the curveball and putting two good swings on them in big situations.”
Riggleman also credited Whitehair’s performance, but wasn’t happy with his players’ overall approach.
“It seems like we just sort of expected to have the game to come to us, instead of going out and attacking, both with the bats and with our gloves,” he said. “We need to hunt fastballs early in counts, and we need to expect to make a play on every pitch. That’s how you have to play the game.”
And despite the fact that today’s loser’s bracket game at 5:00 p.m. at Mylan Park pits his team against a Preston squad that lost 20-0 to UHS earlier this season, Riggleman was insistent in delivering a strong message.
“I told them that they’d better come out and want it,” he said. “It’s win or go home time now, so we’d better not be looking past anybody. There’s always tomorrow in baseball, but at the end of the year, if you’re not playing well, you can quickly run out of tomorrows. We need to be better.”
