West Virginia Crushes Marshall

The West Virginia Mountaineers (17-10) continued their momentum heading into the second weekend of Big 12 Conference play with a lopsided 17-8 win over in-state foe, the Marshall Thundering Herd (13-16-1) Wednesday afternoon.

“It’s good to win these games,” said West Virginia head coach Randy Mazey. “They’re trying as hard as they can to beat us all the time and they’ve done it in the past and our guys know they are capable of beating us. And it’s not who the best team is, it’s the team that plays the best and they had us down four nothing and if they throw one more big inning up instead of us and things could have gone the other way.”

Ryan Leitch put the Herd on the board in the second with a solo home run over the left field wall.

West Virginia starting pitcher Tyler Strechay tossed two innings before Michael Kilker took the mound to start the second. He struggled with command, walking Geordon Blanton to begin the inning and on a wild pitch, Blanton took second. Then, Kilker gave up an RBI single on a 3-1 pitch, prompting head Mazey to call in freshman Trent Hodgdon. A wild pitch, a walk and an RBI single ended Hodgdon's afternoon. Mazey then handed the ball over to Zach Ottinger. The first pitch was a passed ball that brought in the third run of the inning before he settled in and got out of the jam.

The Mountaineers got a run in the bottom of the frame after Austin Davis hit a two-out single followed by a double into right-centerfield from J.J. Wetherholt to score Davis.

The West Virginia bats got hot in the fourth, and did all the damage with two outs, collecting five consecutive hits, including RBI doubles from Wetherhold and Mikey Kluska and an RBI triple from Tevin Tucker as the Mountaineers produced seven runs on eight hits to take an 8-4 lead.

“We had the momentum with first and second with nobody out and all of a sudden [Freshman Grant] Hussey gets doubled off and now your like, ‘Oh man, the innings over.’ And then wrapped out six, seven eight hits in a row and that’s pretty impressive nobody panicked,” said Mazey. “We were hitting the ball well off that guy getting a lot of hits early, they just weren’t going between them. So, guys didn’t panic, kept their approaches and it started working out for us.”

Playing their second midweek game of the week, Marshall was running out of reliable arms and control became an issue in the seventh. The Herd walked three, hit two Mountaineer hitters, and three runs scored with three on three wild pitches, and another run crossed on a walk while Austin Davis and Tevin Tucker picked up RBIs.

Marshall walked in two more runs in the eighth and Nathan Blasick brought in another with a sacrifice fly to left field, extending the lead to 17-4.

West Virginia went through pitchers nine and 10 on the day as the Thundering Herd manufactured four runs in the ninth but Deaton Oak closed out the ninth as the Mountaineers take the 17-8 decision. Zach Ottinger’s two innings is enough to collect his first win of the season.

“We had to throw a lot of different guys today,” said Mazey. “Strechay was going two innings regardless if they were two of the immaculate inning variety or if he would have given up 10 runs, we had a lot of guys that needed to throw today.”

West Virginia is back in action on Friday to start the first game of a three-game series versus Baylor on Friday with the first pitch set for 6:30 pm at Monongalia County Ballpark. Game two is scheduled for Saturday evening at 4:00 and the series finale is Sunday afternoon at 1:00.

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