GRANVILLE — West Virginia’s 13-3 loss against No. 6 Oklahoma State could be spelled out with just one letter: K.
Oklahoma State pitcher Bryce Osmond handed the Mountaineers their first Big 12 series loss of the season on Sunday after becoming a Usain Bolt of sorts on the mound at Mon County Ballpark.
WVU hitters simply couldn’t catch up to him.
The 6-foot-3 sophomore was dominant early, striking out six of the first nine WVU batters he faced and finished with a career-high 11 over seven innings of three-hit ball.
WVU struck out 12 times in all and the game was stopped after eight innings, due to the 10-run mercy rule.
“It was just one of those days,” WVU head coach Randy Mazey said. “We haven’t played a bad game in a long time. When you play 60 games a year, you’re going to play some bad games. They’re hard to avoid. It was unfortunate we played one today.”
At one point, Osmond struck out six straight, which was more than enough time to allow the Cowboys (26-10, 9-3 Big 12) to blow the game open with three home runs in the first inning to take a 5-0 lead.
David Mendham hit a two-run opposite-field shot to left, followed by Marcus Brown’s homer to right field and Griffin Doersching smacked one to left that cleared the entire stadium and may have hit a passing car on University Town Centre Drive some 425-feet away.
“He was good,” Mazey said of Osmond, who picked up his third victory of the season. “Some days you hit and some days you don’t. He made good pitches when he had to. Once you get to 5-0, the at-bats from our hitters were like, “Gosh, this is a pretty big hill we’ve got right here.’ We don’t have experience playing bad games, so it was a little bit foreign to us.”
The uphill mentality carried over into WVU’s defense, too.
The Mountaineers (22-12, 6-3) committed three errors on the day and two of them led to runs.
Aside from the errors, WVU’s defense also came up short in two other moments.
Oklahoma State’s Nolan McLean was awarded a double in the third inning when WVU left fielder Braden Barry called off shortstop Tevin Tucker on a deep popup, but had the ball bounce off his glove as he tried to make a diving grab.
In the seventh, WVU right fielder Austin Davis got twisted on a liner, but appeared to make a diving grab, only to have the ball come out of his glove as he hit the ground.
Those plays didn’t lead to any more runs, not that the Cowboys needed them.
“Kids are kids and energy gets sucked out of you and it seems like it’s snowball effect you can’t stop sometimes,” Mazey said. “A.D. will catch that ball 100 times in a row and so will Braden Barry. We’ve been playing great defense, but we picked a bad day not to do it.”
The game’s billing was the winner was going to own first place in the Big 12, but the Mountaineers didn’t live up to their end of the bargain after splitting the first two games of the series in what was high-level play.
Oklahoma State, which has won five of its last six, now sits in first place in the Big 12 midway through the conference season, while the Mountaineers are battling TCU for second heading into a big week that will include a rivalry game against Pitt on Tuesday at PNC Park, before a three-game weekend series against No. 4 Texas Tech in Lubbock, Tex.
West Virginia’s offense didn’t get a spark until the fifth inning when Nathan Blasick hit a solo home run, his second in two days. Blasic also added a run-scoring single in the seventh and was 2 for 3 with two RBIs.
“He’s got a couple of home runs against really good pitching,” Mazey said. “The bottom of our lineup, the whole season, hasn’t produced a ton. We’re just trying to find some pieces that may help us moving forward.”
Zach Bravo took the loss for WVU after struggling in that first inning. WVU’s bullpen also struggled, allowing eight runs over seven innings, including two on wild pitches.
TWEET @bigjax3211
