MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — WVU baseball coach Randy Mazey has had quite a dilemma heading into his ninth season with the Mountaineers.
For years, he’s battled the stigma West Virginia can’t compete at the national level in baseball, but has since hosted an NCAA Regional (2019) and now finds the program ranked as high as No. 14 nationally by D1Baseball.com. Several other national rankings have the Mountaineers in the top 25.
But when the Big 12 preseason poll came out Jan. 28, WVU was picked to finish sixth by the coaches in the conference. The national respect is there for a team returning a lot of talent, but Mazey’s counterparts still have the Mountaineers in the latter half of the Big 12.
He isn’t looking at the sixth-place spot as an insult, however, as much as a compliment on how good the Big 12 may be on the diamond this season.
“That’s probably about right. The sixth-place team in our league probably should be in the top 20,” Mazey said.
“West Virginia always fights for national respect. When you get some, it is like you have to reverse strategy and teach them that if you are going to be ranked that high, and people think that highly of you, then you can’t afford to take a day off.”
Like teams from all spring NCAA sports, most of WVU’s 2020 season was wiped out due to COVID-19 in mid-March. It played just 16 games before conference play was about to begin, sitting at 11-5.
But heading into this season, Mazey is looking at many of the issues that plagued the 2020 season in a positive light. The MLB Draft was just five rounds last year instead of the typical 40, so many players who would likely be in the pros decided to return to college, and the Mountaineers are no exception.
“We’ve got several guys on the team right now that wouldn’t be here if the draft was a normal draft,” Mazey said. “Jackson Wolf, Tyler Doanes and Tyler Chadwick coming in and Adam Tulloch coming in, they would have signed pro in a regular draft. That gives us four really experienced players.”
Wolf is a lanky left-handed starter who was incredible in his brief 2020 appearances, going 3-1 in four starts and posted a 1.05 ERA in 25 2/3 innings. Doanes, a junior, has started as a middle infielder his entire career, and Chadwick (right-handed pitcher) and Tulloch (left-handed pitcher) are both highly touted true freshmen.
It wasn’t all good news from Mazey — he announced shortstop Tevin Tucker and starting pitcher Ryan Bergert are both out for the season following off-season surgeries. Bergert was critical to WVU’s postseason run two years ago, not allowing a run in his final 10 appearances. Tucker has started all 76 games of his career at shortstop.
The Mountaineers will open with a whopping six-game series at Georgia State on Feb. 19, while the first game at Monongalia County Ballpark will be March 5, the first of a three-game set against Kent State.
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