MORGANTOWN — Where it concerns postseason metrics in their respective sports, Randy Mazey and Bob Huggins are at the opposite ends of the spectrum.
Huggins, the West Virginia men’s basketball head coach, has often told the story of the big board that hangs in his team’s practice facility.
On it is all of WVU’s opponents and their standings in certain metrics like the Ratings Percentage Index (RPI), as well as where the Mountaineers stand in those same metrics.
Huggins’ strategy is to make sure his players know how much each game is worth in terms of building a resumé for the NCAA tournament.
“I never want my players coming up to me at the end of the season and saying they didn’t know,” Huggins has said.
Then there’s Mazey, WVU’s baseball head coach.
“What’s the RPI?” he jokingly asks. “Oh yeah, I’ve heard of that.”
There is no big board filled with RPI numbers or NCAA-tournament projections to be found anywhere in any WVU baseball facility.
Mazey makes sure to never include that info in any team meeting, either.
“We don’t ever have that discussion,” he said.
His reasoning is simple, which is to say Mazey believes college athletes already have enough to focus on without adding in computer-generated facts and figures into the conversation.
“You don’t ever want to play a game and tell the team, ‘Hey this is for the RPI,’ ” Mazey said.
Make no mistake, the numbers and NCAA projections aren’t ignored, and Mazey isn’t about to believe his players don’t look at them on their own.
“We know where we are and we know what we need to do,” WVU outfielder Braden Barry said. “More than anything, it’s just about us going out there and winning a baseball game. You try not to look too far into the future. It’s nice to see your name in the (projections), but we still have to go out and win some baseball games.”
WVU (29-18, 10-8 Big 12) is ranked No. 36 in the RPI heading into Friday’s 7:30 p.m. game against Oklahoma (29-17, 11-7), which is ranked No. 32 in the RPI.
The Mountaineers are in fifth place in the Big 12 standings — one game behind both Oklahoma and Texas Tech — in a league that is widely projected to put six teams into the NCAA tournament.
“You can’t ignore the results. In our sport, RPI means about everything,” Mazey said. “We’re sitting in a pretty good spot right now, as long as we do what we’re supposed to do against two of the best offensive teams in the Big 12 coming up. It’s not going to be easy by any stretch.”
WVU faces Oklahoma, which is coming off taking two-of-three last weekend against TCU, and the Sooners have averaged 12.4 runs per game over their last three Big 12 series against Kansas, Kansas State and TCU.
WVU then hosts Kansas State next weekend to close out the regular season.
“Oklahoma is playing as well as they have all season and we’re on the road,” Mazey said. “It’s never easy to win on the road. To go down there and win a game, or two, as far as the RPI goes, would really give us a boost.”
According to NCAA projections by both Baseball America and DI Baseball, the Mountaineers are in the field of 64, it’s just a matter of what regional they get placed in.
That, in itself, is already an accomplishment. The Mountaineers were picked to finish eighth — out of nine Big 12 teams — in the coaches’ preseason poll and expectations for WVU were rather low heading into the season.
Now, WVU is just one victory shy of its ninth 30-win season over the last 22 years and is in position to reach only its 14th NCAA tournament.
Just don’t expect Mazey to bring any of that up to his team before they take the field against the Sooners.
“I can’t imagine they don’t already look at it, but I’ve never heard them talk about it,” Mazey said. “I don’t want them talking about it, but again, you can’t ignore the results. It’s what drives college baseball, so I’m sure they know.”
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