West Virginia found themselves behind early in their first game of the Big 12 Tournament, as the No. 4 seeded Mountaineers were down 3-0 to No. 9 seed TCU at the top of the fifth inning of their double-elimination first-round matchup in Arlington, Texas.
Things could have been even worse for WVU following a handful of errors and sloppy play, which head coach Randy Mazey embraced during an interview on ESPN’s Broadcast of the Big 12 Championship ahead of the bottom of the .
“Did you ever think that you should be losing by 10 to nothing but you’re within a field goal of tying this thing up?” Mazey asked. “Yeah things haven’t been that pretty so far but the game’s not even halfway over, I don’t think if I can see the scoreboard. So we’ve got a lot of time left, all we gotta do is chip away a little bit and we’ll be good.”
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Mazey had perfect timing as his team would score their first two runs of the game in the bottom of the fifth inning, showing a new sign of life and trailing just 3-2 entering the sixth inning.
The Mountaineers have shown similar resilience all season long, especially when they had to start the season without reigning Big 12 Player of the Year JJ Wetherholt. Who missed the first 25 games of the season with a hamstring injury and haw steadily worked himself back to peak form. With Mazey being asked what it’s like to almost have the vintage version of Wetherholt back in his lineup.
“Well that’s like having a vintage version of a real nice bottle of wine,” Mazey said. “He’s a dynamic player and he missed 25 games the next 20 games it’s like he’s going through spring training you know and getting timing back. That’s the purpose of spring training is to let all the pitchers and the hitter get ready for the season to start.
“He went through that spell and it sure does appear that he’s seeing the ball really well right now. So hopefully he’ll get hot down the stretch here and have some other Mountaineers join him and see how that goes.”
Despite Wetherholt’s absence, West Virginia was still able to end the regular season with a 33-20 record and a 19-11 record in conference play. An accomplishment that Mazey credits his team with for stepping up and taking matters into their own hands.
“I think they took it upon themselves really, they knew JJ was out and when that happens it’s like (Sidney) Crosby being out for the Penguins you know? Everybody else has to elevate their game a little bit and our guys are really good at that,” Mazey explained. “There are so many guys who got playing time on this team not just because JJ was hurt. Catcher missed two games, first baseman, second baseman missed 10 games each.”
“So everybody had to step up at that time and if they wouldn’t have done what they did at that time we wouldn’t have won 19 games in the league. So that’s the good news, the bad news if we wouldn’t have had any injuries we might be undefeated right now,” Mazey joked.
Wetherholt is fresh off of recording two home runs in West Virginia’s final series of the season against TCU. A spark he’ll look to rekindle yet again versus the Horned Frogs down the stretch of the Mountaineers’ Round 1 matchup of the conference tournament.
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