WVU baseball continued their amazing start to the season last night with a 5-4 win over in-state rival Marshall. The win improved the Mountaineers to 31-4 (10-3 in the Big 12) on the season, and they are ranked the No. 24 team in the country.
Before the Mountaineers’ victory on Tuesday, head coach Steve Sabins spoke on the season up to this point, primarily on how hard it was for WVU to get ranked with the best winning percentage in the entire country.
“I don’t keep up too closely with any of that. I do know that that particular site does a great job of covering our sport. Whether we feel disrespected or not, that is not really of my concern,” Sabins said.
The biggest reason for West Virginia’s ranking at this point in the season is their strength of schedule. If you were to look at other teams in our conference with similar records, most of them have faced much tougher competition. Take Arizona, for example, who has faced ranked opponents such as Tennessee, Mississippi State, and Texas A&M when they were the No. 1 team in the country. The Mountaineers have faced one ranked team all year, and of course, that was Arizona.
“Strength of schedule is based on how other schools perform, so unless we know how they will perform, it’s not feasible to be able to schedule,” Sabins said. “The reality is that this particular schedule was made 2 or 3 years ago, and it has been the same formula that I and Mazey have basically scheduled for the last 10 years. The ironic part is, if those schools beat us more, we would have a better strength of schedule,” he added.
West Virginia will have chances later in the season to improve this resume, including big series against Kansas and Kansas State to end conference play. Those two series and every game for WVU are absolutely crucial from this point on.
The Mountaineers face Cincinnati at home this weekend with a chance to reach 34 wins on the year. The first game will begin on Thursday, Apr. 17, at 6:30 p.m. ET.
