Steve Sabins Says Half-Dozen Players on WVU's Roster are Battling 'Viral Infection'

All week, West Virginia fans have been eager to get to this massive series with first-place UCF for a chance to swap spots with them in the Big 12 standings.

After Friday night's 5-0 dud, now the best the Mountaineers can do is win the series and tie the Knights for the top spot, potentially with Kansas. At the end of the day, winning the series is all that matters, and there's still a chance for WVU to do that; it's just going to be a little more difficult.

WVU's offense never got anything going, and there were several at-bats throughout the night where guys were chasing out of the zone, not forcing UCF's pitchers to truly compete in the zone. Even when contact was made, they weren't really barreling anything up. It was the first time this season that the Mountaineers had been shut out.

In his postgame press conference, head coach Steve Sabins explained what he feels could have been behind the poor night at the dish.

“I think there’s ebbs and flows of the season. Playing four emotional games across the country, flying back in a time zone three hours away, having six guys on our team battling a viral illness and on medication, there’s probably a lot of factors that go into it. It was not like us. I thought we chased. I thought out bat speed looked low tonight. I didn’t think, in general, our guys physically looked great. You just watch so much baseball and you stand in that third base box and you watch a million swings in batting practice… just like the rotational speed of the hitters… sometimes when your body’s worn down, you start making decisions a little bit earlier because you don’t feel like your bat can get to the ball in time and that leads to poor decisions. (Saturday) we’ll probably change our BP structure a little bit. We might go inside. We might do some small groups. We might let guys sleep a little bit longer. Just a lot of factors for me when I’m watching, I’m going like these bodies aren’t moving explosively tonight.”

When asked if he knew exactly what was going around the team, he responded, “I was told viral infection. I just know not sleeping and hot flashes and some guys throwing up and coughing and that kind of thing.”

Obviously, for privacy and game planning reasons, he's not going to divulge who is going through it right now, but it was pretty clear that the lineup lacked that jolt they usually bring to the table. It does help that ace Maxx Yehl will be on the bump this afternoon for the Mountaineers, but scratching across a couple of runs early will be key to generating some momentum in game two of the series.

First pitch between the Mountaineers and Knights is set for 2 p.m. ET.