MORGANTOWN — I have never used this space before to attempt to tell you what to take an interest in or how to spend your money.
The reason for that is simple. No one likes to be told how to spend their time and money.
So, what we’ll say here is this: If you have any type of casual interest in seeing a WVU program in a major sport compete for a spot in the NCAA tournament in 2022, you may want to keep an eye on Randy Mazey’s baseball bunch.
A couple of months ago, there wasn’t much in the way of expectations for this group, which seemed sort of fitting considering the seasons WVU football and men’s and women’s basketball just had.
You looked at this WVU baseball team and saw an athletic group in the outfield and a couple of really good gloves at shortstop and second base.
The pitching, maybe, would be better than average.
But, there were also true freshmen at first and third base and there didn’t seem to be a lot of pop in the lineup.
Sure, this group could run and steal bases, but it’s tough to match up stolen bases against teams like Oklahoma State, TCU, Texas Tech and Texas, who seemingly have the guys to just power their way to eight or nine runs per game.
Over these last two months, what the Mountaineers (22-12, 6-3 Big 12) have accomplished is far more than simply exceeding expectations.
They now carry the burden of being the school’s last chance of hope in this school year.
Hope that 2021-2022 wasn’t just a complete waste of time. Hope that WVU athletics aren’t slipping down the ladder of competition among its Big 12 brethren.
That’s an issue at the moment, too, because no one has a crystal ball and can say definitively what WVU football and the hoops teams will have to offer in the months to come.
Sure, there are signs of potential.
The football team just signed a 5-star quarterback in J.T. Daniels.
Bob Huggins has signed a number of new junior-college kids and reached into the transfer portal for a couple more recruits.
Dawn Plitzuweit was just hired to begin a new era of women’s basketball.
Maybe that all leads to bigger and better things.
Maybe it leads to those WVU teams once again competing for Big 12 titles and NCAA tournaments.
Maybe it leads to WVU once again at least being in the same neighborhood as Oklahoma football or Kansas men’s basketball or Baylor women’s basketball, rather than just battling to stay in the middle of the pack or needing a win late in the year just to become bowl eligible.
Then again, maybe it doesn’t.
Serious question here: What happens to WVU’s athletic reputation if those sports struggle again next season?
What happens if the new quarterback isn’t enough to overcome the heap of starters that entered the transfer portal?
What happens if all the new guys Huggins is signing need a lot of time to develop and fit in and wins are once again hard to come by?
That is not a pretty picture for a WVU athletic department that, now more than ever, needs a jolt of excitement.
The Academic Incentive Program will begin to pay scholarship athletes a stipend in September, and that’s on top of the cost-of-attendance stipend college athletes have already been earning for a few years now.
That all means a ton of money the athletic department has to raise, and remember the Big 12 TV deal isn’t going to be worth what it once was after Texas and Oklahoma depart for the SEC in the coming years.
Trust me on this, it is no fun for an athletic department to ask for handouts when its athletic teams are middle of the road in a conference that is about to have a major shake-up.
In a nutshell, that’s why this story that’s being written by WVU baseball is all so important, because it’s basically the only jolt of excitement in town.
The pitching that was supposed to be average has turned into Ben Hampton developing into one of the best starters in the Big 12.
Those two freshmen at the corners? J.J. Wetherholt is a solidified future star in the making at third base and Grant Hussey is the Mountaineers’ top power hitter.
Right fielder Austin Davis is maybe one of the most entertaining players in all of college baseball. Sometimes that works against him, but even then it’s still entertaining.
Center fielder Victor Scott II has gone from a guy who couldn’t hit better than .232 over his first two seasons to developing into one of the top players in the Big 12, and he’ll likely get drafted at some point during July’s draft.
WVU lost its weekend series against No. 6 Oklahoma State, and Sunday’s 13-3 defeat at Mon County Ballpark was a stinker.
In splitting the first two games, though, WVU just gave one of the better teams in the country all it could handle.
“If you came to the first two games and you didn’t know any better, you wouldn’t have known which team was in the top 10 or which team was out of the top 10,” Mazey said. “I thought we played better, if not as good, as they did. Yeah, I feel better about our guys after this weekend.”
WVU baseball doesn’t have the national respect or ranking to go along with what it’s accomplished, but that doesn’t change the fact this team is for real, is fun to watch and could contend for a Big 12 title in late May.
That’s a heck of a lot more than could be said for the football and basketball seasons that preceded it.
TWEET @bigjax3211
