WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. — Some 24 hours before West Virginia’s first NCAA regional game in 21 years, Randy Mazey wouldn’t unveil his plans for who’ll pitch Friday.
“Our plan is that we have no plan,” he joked before Thursday’s practice, remaining coy about which pitcher will start against Maryland.
Friday’s games:
No. 1 Wake Forest (39-18) vs. UMBC (23-23), 7 p.m.
No. 2 West Virginia (34-24) vs. No. 3 Maryland (37-21), 2 p.m.
Conventional wisdom points to junior BJ Myers (4-4, 4.15), the lone starter still healthy from the original weekend rotation.
Or West Virginia could ride with freshman Isaiah Kearns (5-0, 4.78), whose past two starts combine like this: 13 2/3 innings, one earned run, six hits, 13 strikeouts and zero walks.
There’s also freshman Alek Manoah (1-1, 3.10), whose last four starts all resulted in Mountaineers victories.
While Mazey and pitching coach Derek Matlock no doubt have chosen a Game 1 starter, they aren’t revealing it publicly — intent on keeping the Terps guessing right up until game time.
“We just go with the guy that we feel is the best matchup for the team in front of us,” Mazey said. “Since it’s been basically a M*A*S*H unit the last half of the season, we’ve asked guys to start games on short notice and with no preparation.
“The mentality on the pitching staff is ‘Coach, if you need me, give me the ball.’ We’ve gotten tremendous starts and outings out of guys that we had no idea were even going to pitch this year.”
Third-seeded Maryland has gone chalk with its starter, tapping Big Ten pitcher of the year Brian Shaffer (7-3, 2.18) to face WVU.
Short fences
During batting practice Thursday, balls carried well to the power alleys. Darius Hill, homerless in his last 28 games, grew wide-eyed when he spanked a pitch over the evergreens beyond the wall in right-center.
“Did you see that ball carry? I don’t usually hit them that far.”
The foul-line dimensions are particularly homer-friendly: 310 feet in left and only 300 to right.
“You can’t get too excited about it, because that can just knock you out of your whole approach,” said first baseman Jackson Cramer, West Virginia’s leader with 10 homeruns. “But it’s definitely nice after playing on a really big field last weekend (in Oklahoma City).”
Of course the reachable fences at David F. Couch Ballpark mean something completely different to WVU sidearm reliever Jackson Sigman, whose 35 appearances rank fourth nationally.
“The whole point of pitching is keeping the ball down and forcing ground balls,” he said. “So if you do your job you don’t have to worry about the ball leaving the yard.”
Building toward national relevance
While this team finally snapped WVU’s 21-year postseason drought, Mazey said previous squads laid the foundation by outperforming expectations. The 2013 team, for example, was picked last in the Big 12 yet tied for third. The 2014 and 2016 teams also beat projections.
“When we joined the Big 12 five years ago the league was pretty imposing,” Mazey said. “We went into this league with some trepidation about how it was going to go and ‘What’s going to happen to the lowly Mountaineers?’
“But we established a culture that we weren’t going to stand back and just let the Big 12 steamroll us.”