WVU Baseball Suffers Crushing Loss to Open Super Regional

WVU Baseball suffered a blowout loss to open the Baton Rouge Super Regional on Saturday, June 7, falling 16-9 to their hosts, the LSU Tigers. The loss pushes the Mountaineers to the brink of elimination in the three game series, and they’ll need to win out on the road in order to advance to their first-ever College World Series appearance.

Although the Mountaineers struck first, opening a 1-0 lead in the second inning on a pair of productive outs, the Tigers got into the bullpen in the fifth inning and began to feast, hitting two grand slams on a windy afternoon.

After starting pitcher Griffin Kirn ran into trouble in the fourth inning, allowing a three-run home run, West Virginia head coach Steve Sabins tried to throw a curveball, opting for sparsely used relievers JJ Glasscock and Cole Fehrman — entering the game with just 12.2 innings pitched all season — but the Tigers didn’t blink, pushing their lead to 10-1 and batting around the order.

Kyle West singled and Sam White doubled to open the sixth. Skylar King singled them home, then a single and a throwing error scratched across two more runs, allowing West Virginia to close the gap to 10-5.

The Tigers weren’t anywhere close to finished, however, piling on six more runs in the home half of the frame. Mountaineers’ freshman Gavin Kelly added two more runs with a seventh inning homer, as did Kyle West in the ninth inning, but West Virginia couldn’t stage a massive comeback.

WVU Baseball will face LSU at 6 p.m. on Sunday, June 8 in a win or go home matchup.