Chansen Cole Gets the Ball as WVU Opens Super Regional Against Cal Poly

The West Virginia Mountaineers are preparing to host the Cal Poly Mustangs for the NCAA Super Regionals in a potential three game set with game one scheduled for Friday at noon EST. The action will be televised on ESPN2.

West Virginia head coach Steve Sabins announced on Thursday sophomore Chansen Cole will get the start in the series opener. The right-hander collected his ninth win of the season last week to open the Morgantown Regional after he tossed six innings and recorded a career-high 10 strikeouts.

Cole returned to the mound three days later in the final against Kentucky in a pivotal moment. The Wildcats had just tied the game with back-to-back home runs. He quickly settled in and recorded the final out of the frame. He threw a hitless ninth before leaving he game in the tenth.

West Virginia left nothing on the table to return to the super regionals for a program record-setting third consecutive season. Redshirt junior Maxx Yehl started the final game of the regionals after sustaining injury in the first game against Kentucky, junior Dawson Montesa threw 122 pitches Sunday night and took the mound Monday night, and graduate Ian Korn replaced Yehl Saturday and went three and two thirds, then two days later, tossed 2.2 innings.

With West Virginia's top four pitchers all seeing action during the regional, Sabins said setting the rotation begins with checking in with his staff and assessing how each arm has recovered from the weekend workload.

"I think the real piece of that is just communication with the players. So you're really trying to get a pulse on the players and where they're at, and you're kind of taking tabs. Then you're using your eyes with how the ball's coming out.

"We needed to train, we needed to prepare, and we needed to get better, but we also needed to recover, and that was important this week, but Chansen Cole are going to start Game one for us, and then after that it will be TBD. I think the situation, win, lose, draw, how many innings, who you need to use in order to win the game is important."

After preparing for three different programs, the Mountaineers will see some normalcy in the upcoming series against Cal Poly.

"It's a little bit different when you're playing a three-game set versus once you lose a game in a regional. It's basically single elimination. It's do or die. So it's literally just about winning that game.

"When you have a series to win, you can manage it a little bit differently. Not necessarily that that has to be beneficial, but you can look at it a different way. So we're considering all angles, but we know that Cole will take the bump for us to start it.

"It is nice to be at home and play a three-game set. That's what this team was built to do — play three-game sets.

"When you build pitching staffs and you build teams, that's kind of what you envision and how you manage it. We're probably most comfortable there just because you do it the most.

"So, yeah, kind of back to baseball as we know it."

Cole has been second behind teammate, and Big 12 Pitcher of the Year, Maxx Yehl in the league in ERA. The gritty right-hander owns a 2.87 ERA with 95 strikeouts on the season.

Add us as a preferred source on Google