Dotson deals Mountaineers to another win over defending champs

CONWAY, S.C. — Conner Dotson struck out 10 over six innings and West Virginia won 4-1 at No. 18 Coastal Carolina on Monday, wrapping up its fourth straight win at the Caravelle Resort Tournament.

Cole Austin had an RBI single in the first and a towering solo homer in the third inning for the Mountaineers, who improved to 5-2 and beat the defending national champs for the second time in 48 hours.

“These early games, you learn a lot about your club, and we’ve won some games in different ways this weekend,” West Virginia coach Randy Mazey said. “There have been times where we pitched really well, times where we hit really well, and we played great defense the whole time we were down here. You do those three things pretty well and you’ll win some games.”

Dotson (2-0) was staked to 2-0 lead before allowing a run in four hits in the bottom of the first. While he gave up seven hits and walked five, his strikeouts made for a quality outing.

Dotson faced the minimum three batters in the second, third and fifth innings and enjoyed a stretch where he struck out seven of eight.

“They were hitting him a lot the first two innings,” Mazey said. “They got a lot of hits and were hitting balls hard, but once he settled in, I think he learned a lot about pitching today. He started moving his fastball around and throwing breaking balls and changeups in fastball counts. That’s when he got really good and started piling up the strikeouts.”

West Virginia’s bullpen combination of Jackson Sigman and Jacob Potock followed with three shutout innings, holding the Chanticleers to one hit.

Potock pitched a scoreless ninth inning to pick up his first save.

Zack Hopeck (0-1) allowed four runs on eight hits in taking the loss for the Chanticleers, who fell to 4-5.

West Virginia jumped out against Hopeck with Austin Hill’s single before Jackson Cramer’s RBI double to left-center. Austin’s single through the left side gave WVU a 2-0 lead.

Austin added his second home run of the weekend in the third to make it 3-1.

The Mountaineers added to their lead with a run in the sixth. Pinch-hitter Braden Zarbnisky walked with one out and was sacrificed to second by catcher Ivan Gonzalez before TJ Lake singled him home.

Dotson’s day ended in the seventh when he walked the first two batters he faced. Sigman relieved him and quickly put an end to the scoring threat with a pair of strikeouts and a groundout.

Coastal again had a chance to chip into the West Virginia lead in the eighth, when two runners reached with one out. However, Sigman came through with a strikeout and a fly out to end the threat.