RICHMOND, Va. — The West Virginia baseball team kept its offensive attack going in Sunday 13-1 win over Richmond at Pitt Field.
The Mountaineers tallied 17 hits in the win, including six extra-base hits. In all, five players finished with multi-hit performances, as West Virginia tallied four runs in the first, one in the third, four in the fourth, two in the seventh and two in the ninth.
With the win, WVU took two of three games at the Central Virginia Challenge this weekend. The squad combined to score 26 runs in the last two days of the event.
“From the first pitch, we were on the ball today,” WVU coach Randy Mazey said. “When a couple guys get hits, then other guys feel like they have to keep up by swinging the ball. It was a really good day, not just hitting, but pitching and defense, too. That was our best game of the year, for sure.”
For the second consecutive game, West Virginia (7-4) jumped on the opposition early, scoring four runs in the top of the first inning. After redshirt senior outfielder/right-handed pitcher Braden Zarbnisky and sophomore infielder/outfielder Austin Davis began the game with base hits, junior infielder Tyler Doanes registered an RBI single through the left side of the infield to make it 1-0.
From there, senior infielder Kevin Brophy brought home another run with an RBI double, before junior catcher Paul McIntosh crushed a two-run homer to left.
WVU finished with four runs on five hits in the first.
Freshman left-handed pitcher Jake Carr allowed a run in the bottom of the first, cutting the Mountaineer lead to three at 4-1. After that, however, the St. Albans, West Virginia, native was solid, limiting the Richmond offense to just one run on three hits through 6.0 innings of work. WVU turned one of its two defensive double plays of the day to get Carr out of a first-inning jam and maintain the early lead.
In the third, Davis created a run for WVU by singling to center, stealing second, advancing to third on a passed ball and scoring on a balk. That made it 5-1, before the Mountaineers added four more in the fourth.
That’s when sophomore infielder Tevin Tucker’s RBI groundout scored a WVU run, before Davis recorded a two-run single to right. Then, Doanes added his second RBI of the day with a run-scoring single to center, giving West Virginia a 9-1 advantage.
McIntosh’s RBI double in the top of the seventh made it 10-1, before McCormick added to the lead with an RBI single moments later. In the ninth, the Orland Park, Illinois, showed off his power, crushing a no-doubt homer to right field to give WVU a 13-1 advantage.
“We just showed ourselves what we are capable of,” Mazey said. “We’re capable of scoring four or five runs in any inning because we can do a lot of things on offense. It was really good to see how we played today.”
