For a while on Friday night at Kendrick Family Ballpark, it looked like it would be a stretch for baseball to be played.
The wind whipped, the rain fell, and there was no sign of life on the turf. Roughly 90 minutes after the scheduled first pitch, things got underway between No. 17 UCF and West Virginia, but it was how the Mountaineers ended the game which told the story.
The Knights scored three runs in the fifth inning, as they compiled five consecutive hits. One of the hits was a double which is a ball that on most nights would be caught by West Virginia left fielder Kyle West.
“Look up into the sky right now. Rain in your eyes, and this 35 miles-per-hour wind. This is not an easy night to play defense,” West Virginia head coach Randy Mazey said postgame. “Their center fielder did something similar on Kyle’s ball, it went over his head. We went into it saying the team who played the best defense is going to win the game. Neither team played lights out defense, but we played a little bit better than they did.”
West would get his chance to come to the plate in the bottom of the inning and made up for his miscue. West guided a ball over the left field fence, as WVU’s deficit was cut to one.
“The way we won, team effort. To grind it out in the rain, in the wind, it’s not every day you can create situations like that. When we train throughout practice, I think we do a really good job of giving us as players situations that we can use to fuel us in this type of environment,” West said.
West stepped up to the plate in that type of environment in the eighth inning. This time it was with two runners on, and one out. West roped a ball which looked like it could’ve been caught. It was misread by the UCF center fielder, rolling to the wall, and West ended up tying the game as he slid into third.
WVU ended up taking the lead on an error two batters later as West scored from third and the Mountaineers eventually walked away with their fifth-straight Big 12 win, taking game one, 7-6.
“Gritty. Super gritty,” West said about how his team fared late in the game. “I didn’t think for one second that no matter who stepped in the box they weren’t going to get the job done. Didn’t matter how big the moment was or if it was just a leadoff guy. I think no matter who was in the box, given the circumstances was going to do their best to give us an opportunity to win.”
With the win, West Virginia picked up a Quad 1 win, and also picked up their ninth Big 12 win, staying tied atop the standings.
“Being down by three in the middle of the game against a team in the top 20 and to come back and win — really, really, good,” Mazey said.
