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5 hours ago
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West Virginia knew the LSU offense was a handful, and the Tigers lived up to the billing in their Super Regional win over the Mountaineers.
West Virginia baseball was on the cusp of history for a second straight year. The Mountaineers stood two wins away from their first-ever College World Series appearance, but just as they did last year, they came up short against No. 6 LSU.
Part of the reason was the Tigers' explosive offense, taking advantage of anything and everything against the WVU pitching staff this past weekend.
"The reality is that we didn't have a single pitcher go more than four innings, and those guys, on average, are two starters, throw much longer than that. And so for no pitcher to go over four innings, it's not an effort issue, it's not a compete issue, it was, they ran out of gas. And so there's a plethora of reasons why that could be, but you'd be silly not to think that possibly the conditions had something to do with that," West Virginia head coach Steve Sabins said.
The Mountaineers battled feel-like temperatures over the century mark all weekend long. Command was an issue for every West Virginia pitcher to toe the rubber, while LSU took advantage of seemingly almost every mistake the Mountaineers made.
"I think they're talented first and foremost. They're well coached, they perform in big moments, and it's really when you give great teams and great offenses additional opportunities or free passes, they answer. So we had more walks than what a championship team can do, so the walks and hit by pitch allowed for base runners to get on," Sabins said.
Over the span of the two games at Alex Box Stadium in Baton Rouge, the Mountaineers allowed five runs or more in a single inning four separate times, twice in each game.
There was no inning more indicative of WVU's struggles than the top of the seventh on Sunday.
Trailing by two entering the inning, West Virginia seemingly had a lot of momentum heading into the final stretch of the game.
The inning started with an error on a pop-up just beyond the infield, and then a walk, and hit batter continued the inning. The bases would be cleared with a double, and just when WVU seemed to be out of the inning trailing 8-4, and a comeback still possible, an error extended the inning yet again.
LSU responded with a double and a home run, closing the book on any comeback effort by the Mountaineers.
"Our pitchers were consistently in stressful situations. And so the more stress that pitchers are under with base runners and heat and long at-bats and additional pitches per inning, it catches up to you over the course of time. So my guess is over the last two days, we had a larger pitch count per inning than we did probably all season. So you mix that with some heat in there, and guys don't make as quality pitches over the course of the game, and those pitches get hit by good teams," Sabins said.
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