GRANVILLE — It’s early enough in this 2022 baseball season that snow and chunks of hail fell on the turf at Mon County Ballpark on Saturday.
That still doesn’t take away from the fact that West Virginia’s 8-4 victory against Baylor put the Mountaineers alone in first place in the Big 12.
“Really? I didn’t know that,” said WVU pitcher Ben Hampton, who pitched a gem over 7 2/3 innings, giving up just two runs on six hits to pick up his fifth win of the season.
Believe it.
This scrappy WVU bunch that’s made their mark by either running and stealing or with late-game heroics for most of the season is now looking down at the rest of the conference.
“It just means that we have to stay hungry,” outfielder Victor Scott II said after driving in four runs and making two tough catches in deep centerfield. “We talk to the guys a lot and we don’t want to get complacent in this. We have to stay hungry and keep winning games.”
The significance of the standing is the Mountaineers (19-10, 4-1 Big 12) were picked eighth — the Big 12 has only nine baseball teams — in the coaches’ preseason poll.
“That’s been brought up a few times,” Scott admitted. “It kind of lit a fire up.”
One that has carried it through two series wins so far against the Bears (16-14, 2-6), as well as TCU. Both teams were picked well ahead of the Mountaineers in that poll.
WVU will look to pick up its first conference sweep since downing Texas three times in May of 2016 when the Mountaineers and Baylor finish this three-game series at 1 p.m. Sunday.
“To be honest, I was really upset when that poll came out and we were picked eighth,” WVU head coach Randy Mazey said. “I really wish they had picked us ninth, because when you do that, it gives you every bit of motivation to play. We’ve used that to our advantage in years past.
“For us to get chosen that low by a lot of people, it makes you play with a chip on your shoulder. That’s the way we like to play.”
The Mountaineers have now won four straight. Saturday’s victory was a mixture of Hampton’s pitching, Scott and McGwire Holbrook combined for seven RBIs, and WVU’s defense was top notch.
Scott chased down two deep flies to the warning track, while J.J. Wetherholt made a diving grab at third base that started one of the Mountaineers’ two double plays.
The icing on the cake may have been Austin Davis’ dive in rightfield to get to a hard-hit ground ball in the fifth inning that held Harrison Caley to a single rather than a triple.
“Vic is always making those crazy plays and A.D. makes crazy catches, but to cut that off and hold him to just a single, that was huge,” Hampton said.
Davis added three hits and three runs in what has been a spectacular four-game stretch for him in which he’s 9 for 16 as the leadoff hitter.
Wetherholt, a freshman, is right behind him with eight hits in the same amount of games, and he also scored three runs Saturday.
Scott’s four RBIs gives him a team-leading 29 on the season.
None of it was predicted back in March, when the Big 12 coaches got together for their predictions.
And there is no way to tell what WVU does from here. Following today’s game against Baylor, the tell-tale series will follow next weekend when the Mountaineers host sixth-ranked Oklahoma State, a team that was picked second in the preseason poll that may never leave Mazey’s thoughts this season.
“It challenged our pride a little bit,” Mazey said. “When you challenge the pride of a bunch of kids who work as hard as our kids, then this is what you get.”
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