WVU Baseball

TJ Lake and Marcus Inman Power Mountaineers past Texas

Published

5 years ago

April 27, 2019

The West Virginia Mountaineers (25-14, 9-7) produced more late inning heroics with a 3-2 win over the Texas Longhorns (24-20, 5-10) Friday night in Austin.

Alek Manoah took the mound leading the Big 12 in ERA (1.81) and continued his dominance once again. However, the Longhorns ended his streak of 34 shutout innings in the third. On a 2-2 count with 2 outs in the bottom of the inning, Eric Kennedy doubled into left-centerfield, then Austin Todd poked an RBI single to the opposite field giving the Longhorns the early 1-0 lead.

In the top of the eighth, West Virginia head coach Randy Mazey was looking for an offensive spark and back-to-back pinch hitters Kevin Brophy and TJ Lake answered the call with 2 outs. Brophy drew a walk, then with the count full, TJ Lake delivered a two-run bomb over the right field wall to give the Mountaineers a 2-1 lead.

Manoah’s night ended after eight strikeouts in seven innings and Nick Snyder took the hill in the eighth.

Snyder’s night was quick after giving up a base hit to Kennedy on a 0-2 pitch. Mazey went to his bullpen to bring in his closer Sam Kessler.

Then with two outs and with Kennedy at second, Ryan Reynolds hit a hard ground ball up the middle for an RBI single to tie the game at two.

West Virginia’s Marcus Inman had walk-off wins the last two Saturday’s and again came up big in the ninth. On the first pitch, Inman got a hold of the ball and sent it over the Mountaineer bullpen in left field for a game winning solo homerun as WVU regained the lead 3-2.

Kessler shut down any hopes of a Longhorns comeback in the bottom of the inning and the Mountaineers took the first game of the three-game series.

“That’s a huge win because the whole night their pitcher was dominating our hitters. Just completely dominating them.” Said Mazey. “We had to run some left-handed hitters in our lineup to give them a different look and TJ Lake got maybe the biggest hit of the season for us with the two-run homer.”

West Virginia will face Texas in game two Saturday at 3:30 est inside UFCU Disch-Falk Field.

POS	#	PLAYER	AB	R	H	RBI	2B	3B	HR	BB	K	SH	LOB	SB	CS	PO	A	E	AVG
2b	1	Doanes, T.	3	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	1	0	1	0	0	3	2	0	.299
cf	7	White, B.	4	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	2	0	1	0	0	2	0	0	.244
rf	31	Hill, D.	4	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	2	0	0	0	0	1	1	0	.286
1b	25	Inman, M.	4	1	2	1	0	0	1	0	2	0	0	0	0	6	1	0	.283
lf	34	McIntosh, P	3	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	2	0	1	0	0	2	0	0	.286
ss	45	Zitel, A.	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	0	.191
c	32	Gonzalez, I.	4	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	0	0	0	0	12	2	0	.273
dh	5	Strowd, K.	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	–
ph	27	Hamilton, C.	2	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	—
ph	9	Hudson, T.	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	.135
3b	17	Dull, P.	2	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	2	0	0	0	0	0	1	0	.207
ph/3b	13	Brophy, K.	0	1	0	0	0	0	0	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	0	.165
ss	2	Tucker, T	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	1	0	0	0	0	1	0	0	.178
ph/lf	12	Lake, TJ	1	1	1	2	0	0	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	.205
Team Batting Totals	30	3	3	3	0	0	2	3	14	0	0	3	0	27	11	0	—