West Virginia Reveals Starting Pitchers for Three-Game Series vs. Liberty

Tomorrow night, Steve Sabins' West Virginia Mountaineers will open up a three-game series on the road against the Liberty Flames, who were picked to finish seventh in the Conference USA preseason poll.

Sabins will be rolling out a similar rotation of pitchers, just in a slightly different order.

Game 1: Chansen Cole

The Newberry College transfer had a rather shaky debut, giving up two runs on four hits in 2.2 innings of work against Georgia Southern. He struggled to find the strike zone, often missing high. Before the season began, Sabins said he was the biggest surprise on the staff, so expect a bounce-back performance on Friday night.

Game 2: Dawson Montesa

Montesa by far had the best outing of the opening weekend, punching out seven batters and giving up just two runs in six strong innings. He relied heavily on his fastball early, and once he started flipping in his secondary pitches for strikes, he found a groove.

Game 3: Maxx Yehl

It's likely going to be a bumpy road back for the veteran lefty, who missed all of last season recovering from Tommy John surgery. In his first game in well over a year, he allowed four runs (only one earned) on three hits in just two innings. Regardless of how well he pitches, don't be surprised to see Sabins be extremely cautious with his workload, maybe limiting him to just a few innings, depending on his pitch count.

Sabins on how the Division II transfers pitched on opening weekend

“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 (he) 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.”

West Virginia and Liberty will lift the lid on the series Friday night at 4 p.m. ET. All three games in the series can be streamed on ESPN+.