GRANVILLE — Landon Wallace and Sam White went deep at the plate, Carlson Reed pitched 2 2/3 scoreless innings out of the bullpen and WVU beat visiting TCU 5-4 in front of the sixth-largest crowd in Mon County Ballpark history Friday night.
“That was unbelievable,” WVU coach Randy Mazey said. “I’ve been telling people for years, don’t just come for entertainment purposes, come to help the Mountaineers win, and they dang sure did man. It was just a great college baseball game with a great atmosphere.”
The standing-room-only crowd of 3,441 Mountaineer fans watched WVU (27-11, 6-4 Big 12) grab a 2-0 lead just two batters into the bottom of the first after Tevin Tucker walked and Wallace hit a ball well past the fence in left-center field. It was Wallace’s seventh home run of the year and his fifth since the start of April.
“(The count) was 2-0, I missed a fastball, then he threw a ball and it was 3-1,” Wallace recalled. “I was thinking the only thing he could really throw me was a fastball to be competitive and he did and I just hit it.”
The Nevada transfer went deep twice in his first 28 games as a Mountaineer and has now homered five times in his last nine.
“I’m just trying to make baseball simple again,” he said. “I feel like people try to overcomplicate it. Baseball is just a really simple thing of seeing the ball and hitting the ball.”
On the mound, WVU left-hander Ben Hampton allowed a run before allowing his first hit. TCU (22-16, 7-6) used two walks and an error to score on a sacrifice fly in the top of the second. It wasn’t until the top of the fifth when Karson Bowen reached on an infield single to shortstop that the Horned Frogs would have a tally in the hit column.
“He was really good, he’s been in attack mode the last couple of times out,” Mazey said. “He beat a really good team (Friday), he beat a really good team in Stillwater (Okla.) last week and that’s what Ben’s supposed to do as the Friday night guy.”
WVU’s lead jumped to 5-1 when freshman Sam White sent a three-run home run out to right field in the bottom of the fourth for his third long ball of the season.
TCU got two runs back in the top of the sixth. With two runners on, Kurtis Byrne hit a blooper behind first base that landed in between three WVU fielders and skipped over the right field foul fence for an automatic double that plated both runners.
Austin Davis made his return to Morgantown, starting in right field for the Horned Frogs. Davis graduate transferred to TCU after playing in 164 games for the Mountaineers from 2019-22. Davis hit an RBI double in the top of the seventh inning to cut WVU’s lead to 5-4 and made a stellar catch in foul territory, tumbling over the short fence in right field in the bottom of the second.
Reed come on following Davis’s RBI double and pitched the final 2 2/3 innings to secure the win, picking up his fourth save of the season in the process.
“Carlson’s our guy, he’s been our guys the whole season,” Mazey said. “He’s been so good this whole year and he is starting to really enjoy that moment and that’s pretty hard to teach.”
The final out of the game came when Reed and Davis, former WVU teammates, faced off and Reed induced a groundout to the shortstop.
“I actually told him I thought that’s how it was going to end,” Reed said. “I thought it was going to be me versus him and just see what happens.”
Hampton and Reed both finished with four strikeouts, Wallace had two RBI and White collected the other three as no Mountaineer had more than one hit.
TCU freshman Kole Klecker took the loss on the mound, allowing five runs in five innings.
The Mountaineers and Horned Frogs will continue their three-game series at Mon County Ballpark today at 6:30 p.m.
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