West Virginia unquestionably put together a strong season on the diamond winning their first outright regular season Big 12 Championship and notching the most wins in a single season in program history.
But the Mountaineers lost seven of the last nine games entering the Clemson Regional. However, head coach Steve Sabins’ group showed great resiliency sweeping the region in three games and battling back from a deficit in each to advance to a Super Regional appearance against LSU.
West Virginia knocked off Kentucky and then beat Clemson before coming back from down five runs on two separate occasions to beat the Wildcats in the regional final.
“Incredible for a team that has won a Big 12 title outright and currently has the most wins in program history. And went through a tougher spell at the end of the season to be able to refocus and bounce back and beat two very good teams,” he said.
So what was the difference between the close to the regular season and what unfolded in Clemson? Well, the answer isn’t that simple because there are a lot of moving pieces.
“We think about these things a lot and we do a lot of things. We talk about there being 96 people in our organization and we talk about this team being a coal train and that every person is a part of the coal train and every person is a car in this,” Sabins said. “And we’re all trying to move forward and you know build momentum together. And if something gets off the tracks it can wreck the entire train.”
Sabins said that it wouldn’t be fair to sit back and try to answer why things got back and why his players are moving forward and feeling good about playing because everybody plays a role.
“There’s 96 individuals that go to bed every night trying to figure out how to make this the most successful and best team in the country,” he said.
The head coach of course had his piece and threw things into the fire and started over with rebirths and team meetings and individual ones as well. That included video reviews and sending highlight films over and everything in between.
“Went to steak dinners and got in cold tubs and set up massages and practice hard, practice light and practice in pants and practiced in shorts,” he said. “And practice with no shirts and practice with shirts. And we did everything in between, right? So you try to keep it light and intense at the same time.”
But the most important thing is that West Virginia seems to be moving in the right direction at exactly the right time and nobody is going to have any issues with that. But now the focus shifts to recharging and re-shifting that focus to LSU.
“You try to push the right buttons every step of the way,” he said.
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