GRANVILLE — In the span of two trips to the plate, Reed Chumley went from taking a shot to the nose to busting UCF in its.
The WVU third baseman hit a walk-off solo home run in the 11th inning Sunday at Kendrick Family Ballpark to hand the Mountaineers a thrilling 11-10 victory against the 17th-ranked Knights.
“It was blissful. You work for that moment,” said Chumley, a senior who transferred from Houston Christian this season. “It was just pure joy, honestly. You don’t feel excited. You’re just in the moment and the game is over. I didn’t know what to think. It was just a really cool deal.”
A cool deal that seemed highly improbable hours earlier. UCF (21-12, 8-10 Big 12) took a 4-0 lead before WVU even took its first swings of the game and then extended that out to a 9-5 lead after three innings.
It ended with Chumley leading off the bottom of the 11th inning pulling a shot to left field that landed in UCF’s bullpen that led to a wild celebration at home plate with his teammates waiting for him armed with water buckets and ice.
WVU (22-13, 11-4) earned its second straight Big 12 sweep with the win and its seventh Big 12 victory in a row. This sweep was historic, the first time WVU has ever pulled one off against a top 25 team. The Mountaineers hit the halfway point of the conference season in a first-place tie with Oklahoma.
“There are no words to describe the feeling,” Chumley continued. “All the hard work, all the trials and tribulations, honestly, just come in at that point.
“I’m just really grateful.”
Chumley’s previous at-bat came in the ninth inning, and it saw him take an inside pitch across the nose.
“It just grazed it,” he said.
It was part of a ninth inning that saw WVU erase a 10-8 deficit and tie the game with two bases-loaded walks by Kyle West and Grant Hussey.
“I like to talk in the dugout and said we have nothing to lose here,” said Sam White who busted a double earlier in the ninth and added an RBI triple in the first inning. “We were down two. The pressure was on them. We had some dangerous guys coming up.”
After Logan Sauve singled with one out in the ninth and White’s double, Chumley loaded the bases by taking that pitch to the nose.
West walked to score Sauve, before Hussey went through an at-bat that saw him foul off a couple of pitches before laying off two more that seemed to be very close to the strike zone.
“The most impressive part of that at-bat was the 3-2 pitch that he fouled off,” WVU head coach Randy Mazey said. “That’s the pitch he had been swinging and missing at for most of the game. He got a good swing at that pitch and made the pitcher throw a different pitch. That’s why he drew that walk. He changed the way that pitcher was pitching.”
Hussey’s walk scored Armani Guzman — he pinch ran for White — to send the game into extra innings.
“We’ve been through it,” Mazey said. “There’s nobody out there that’s been through what we’ve been through. When we didn’t win it (in the ninth), we had bases loaded with one out, all of a sudden we tied the game, but they had the momentum. You thought the game was just about over, but now they were back in it.”
WVU reliever Gavin Van Kempen saw to it that didn’t happen.
On a day WVU used eight pitchers, Van Kempen pitched the final 3 2/3 innings, allowing no hits or runs to pick up his sixth win of the season.
In the 10th and 11th innings, Van Kempen set the Knights down in order. In the ninth, he picked off Mikey Kluska at third base to help keep UCF off the scoreboard in that inning.
“You just have to be ready,” Van Kempen said. “The coaches told me before the game to be ready. I said OK and did the exact same things I would do if I was starting a game. You have to keep it consistent and then good things can happen.”
That left the door open for Chumley to become the hero.
“Every kid wants that moment,” Chumley said about the home run, his 10th of the season. “I don’t know if you can really prepare for that moment. You can talk about it in the (batting) cages, but when you get in that moment, if you’re not calm and you’re not trusting yourself, then you won’t make that happen. You have to be as still and as calm as possible when you’re in there.”
