What WVU Must Do to Force a Decisive Thursday Showdown With North Carolina

West Virginia is one win away from being one win away. They are also one loss away from seeing their magical season come to an end. The North Carolina Tar Heels have a ton of advantages heading into this afternoon's matchup, but there is a formula for the Mountaineers to win this one and force another game against the Tar Heels on Thursday.

Pounce on Boaz early

The Tar Heels' bullpen is elite, and if they have a lead in the middle-late innings, you're in big trouble. Today's starter, Folger Boaz, has had a rough go of it at times this year, as teams are hitting at a .332 clip and has an ERA of 7.03. His last outing was over two weeks ago in the Chapel Hill Regional against East Carolina, where he went just 3.1 innings, giving up one run.

Since March 29th, his ERA is 9.30, thanks to some brutal outings against Notre Dame, Georgia Tech (twice), and NC State. He has only gone five innings three times all year, so he's not going to be in there for long before Scott Forbes turns to his completely fresh bullpen. The Mountaineers need to strike early if they want to have a chance to push this thing to Thursday.

More chaos from Armani Guzman on the bases

The Mountaineers are now 27-4 on the season when Guzman successfully steals a base and are 7-2 when he steals multiple bases. It's no coincidence WVU is 2-0 in Omaha when he records a steal and 0-1 when he doesn't. It doesn't always have to come via the hit, but Guzman has to reach base multiple times in order to really put pressure on the Carolina pitching staff and defense, taking some attention away from the batter.

The heart of the order has a day

Gavin Kelly snapped out of his funk yesterday with a 3-for-6 game, hitting his 18th homer of the season, which gave WVU a semi-comfortable 5-0 lead at the time. He was a non-factor offensively against North Carolina on Sunday, going 1/4 with a strikeout, not barreling much of anything up. Not only does he need to have another day, but Paul Schoenfeld needs to get going. Since play has begun in Omaha, he is 1/13 at the dish, striking out six times. The slump has gone on for much of the NCAA Tournament, however, as he's seen his batting average drop from .346 to .328. Sabins needs a three-hole hitter to come up big and put together some strong at-bats.

Keep the ball down, no extra outs

It hasn't been announced yet, but we can assume that Chansen Cole will get the starting nod for the Mountaineers today. If that is the case, he has to pound the bottom quadrant of the strike zone. When he's rolling, he consistently drops that sinker and changeup right there at the bottom, either clipping the zone or just missing and putting the hitter in a difficult position. Leaving those pitches elevated is what cost him in his brief start against Troy last Friday.

The other piece of this is obvious, so I'm not going to go deep into it, but you have to play clean baseball. You can't let what happened on Sunday resurface, or you'll see the same result. North Carolina is too good a team to give extra outs to.

Add us as a preferred source on Google