WVU falls in regular-season finale

“Pressure doesn’t have anything to do with baseball,” Mazey tells his team. “Baseball is supposed to be fun. Just come out here and have a good time.”

Well, it was hard to say that with a straight face this weekend as WVU came into the final series of the regular season against Texas Tech needing to win two of three games to reach the Big 12 Tournament and keep its year going.

The Mountaineers accomplished it in the first two games, allowing them finally to play a Sunday afternoon game that really had no pressure connected to it at all, a game they would wind up losing to Texas Tech, 8-2.

Still, WVU came out of it feeling like winners, having honored its seniors — left fielder Brad Johnson, shortstop Taylor Munden and third baseman Austin Fox.

The trio played their final game in Morgantown and did so in the brand new Monongalia County Ballpark that they had helped open and that drew more than 31,000 fans in 18 games.

“It’s been unbelievable, a sign of things to come,” Mazey said of the acceptance of the team in the new stadium by a whole new fan base.

Of that they could be proud, as well as in seeing the team finish the regular season with a 27-25 record, just a game off the record of last season’s experienced, draft-heavy team.

“I thought about that the other night,” Mazey admitted. “This team overachieved. We went into this season with so many question marks on the mound that I just was hoping we could get a .500 season and get into the conference tournament.”

The Mountaineers did that and now they are eager and ready to move forward to that, the tournament beginning Wednesday in Tulsa.

“I hear it’s nice in Tulsa this time of year,” Mazey said. “We’re going to find out.”

And they go in believing they can make trouble for the favored teams, though their seed won’t be thrashed out until later today when other Big 12 teams complete their regular seasons.

“I could care less about where we’re seeded,” Mazey said. “As long as we are in the tournament, we have a chance to win it.”

They are carrying that attitude into Tulsa.

“Going into this weekend, knowing the Yankees were up 3-nothing on the Red Sox, our mentality was don’t let us in that tournament … don’t let us in that tournament. If this team gets hot at the right time, we’re very capable as we showed, of scoring runs against quality pitching and not giving up a lot of hits against quality hitting,” Mazey said.

“I have a little bit of a feeling the way we have been playing, if we can carry that over to the Big 12 Tournament we can go pretty deep,” top starter Ross Vance added.

The Saturday game was understandably sloppy, being a game without much significance. Fox did say goodbye with a pair of doubles and freshman Kyle Davis had one double to finish the season leading the team in hitting at .350.

WVU took an early 2-0 lead, but the Red Raiders responded by scoring five runs in the top of the third to take the lead for good.

While he went hitless, Taylor Munden finished the year with 11 home runs to lead the Big 12.