Steve Sabins Talks Starting Pitching, Injury Update + More Following 3-0 Start

WVU head coach Steve Sabins recaps the season-opening series.

West Virginia University head coach Steve Sabins | Christopher Hall – West Virginia on SI

It was a successful opening weekend for Steve Sabins and the West Virginia Mountaineers, who had a clean three-game sweep of Georgia Southern on the road, winning games 15-3, 11-10, and 5-2. Monday afternoon, Sabins carved out roughly 20 minutes of his schedule to speak with the media to discuss the series and what's next.

How the Division II transfers pitched

“It was great to see them out there competing for the first time at the Division I level. I think we played a very competitive offense. It was awesome to see them get challenged. Chansen Cole started off on Friday and held his own. He wasn’t as sharp as we had seen him in the past. He never really quite got his changeup working the way he wanted to, but got his feet wet. Dawson Montesa probably had the best start out of anybody. He was really competitive. He found his curveball in the third inning and was really able to pitch off of that. And then Ian Korn really neutralized and stabilized a game for us, and he clipped off four innings.”

Injury report

“I think pretty good right now. Brodie was walking around the airport pretty comfortably. I guess comfortably wouldn’t be the right word, but he was walking. He got a fastball to the shin, and it blew up pretty good. He said he’ll be good by the weekend, but we got to see over the next couple days if we’re able to flush that out. Gavin (Kelly) is good. No issues there. I think we survived weekend one without any serious injuries.”

Early thoughts on 3B Tyrus Hall

“He’s a really fun one. He’s tooled out. He’s big, strong, and fast. I think he had the highest exit velocity of anybody on our team; he stole bases. A lot of times when junior college kids come to this level, it takes a pretty long time to transition to the level of pitching that they’re going to face, so for Tyrus to have success in Week 1 is unusual. He was such a breath of fresh air.”

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