West Virginia put their recent late-game struggles to bed on Friday against Kentucky in the first game of the Clemson Regional.
The Mountaineers trailed 3-0 early on, before they tied the game in the sixth, and then ended up walking off the Wildcats on a sacrifice-fly from Armani Guzman, as WVU won 4-3.
Entering this weekend, the Mountaineers had gone 2-7 in their last nine games, with many of those losses coming on late-inning collapses. West Virginia reversed that fortune, as they didn't allow a run after the fourth inning, and held on in the ninth, despite an error to start the inning.
"The last three weeks have been choppy. We had played okay baseball down the stretch, so to come into this environment on the biggest stage and possibly play our best game in the biggest moment and also get our first walk-off of the season on the road is really special. I think we have the most road wins in the country, and so it's fitting for this team to come on the road and to be able to get their first walk-off," West Virginia head coach Steve Sabins said.
Sabins changed around WVU's lineup on Friday, with one of the moves being the change of Armani Guzman to start at third base. This was only his third start since April 4th, but he came up big for Sabins and company as he went 2-for-3 and had the game-winning at-bat.
The adversity WVU has gone through recently prepared them for this moment, Sabins said. WVU blew leads to Pitt and Kansas State on the road, before getting swept by Kansas in the final weekend of the season.
"They’ve been this way. They’ve been resilient. There’s certain moments throughout the season where you can see growth and and without some struggle or adversity, you don't ever have that opportunity to see that, and so we've won very consistently for a really, really long time," Sabins said.
The reason WVU isn't a host this weekend is because of their late-season losses, but Sabins says those lessons learned helped his team learn the importance of winning, something that paid dividends on Friday.
"I think we were three-quarters of the way through the season, and we had the best winning percentage in the country, and so although that was wonderful and allowed us to play here today, it probably didn't allow for a lot of growth throughout the season of battling back and me needing to be creative with some lineups and change some things and feel in the heat.
"Over the course of the last two or three weeks, I think we had been a little bit stale, and so I think that staleness resulted in a little bit of a fire in our guys and from me to try to make sure that we're getting the right players in the right positions to be successful because ultimately, that's my responsibility. So I think through those hard times, you have an opportunity to do something special, and so for these kids to show up here on this day and to have the walk-off win is certainly special for our program, and hopefully that's kind of the next chapter of our season," Sabins said.
West Virginia looks to have their magical moment propel them through the regional as they play in the 1-0 game on Saturday night.
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