WVU’s Steve Sabins Describes Tough Love Approach to Coaching

WVU Baseball head coach Steve Sabins went under the microscope following the team’s Super Regional loss to LSU for a controversial personnel decision. Entering the NCAA Tournament, Sabins and the Mountaineers opted to try Ben Lumsden at first base instead of veteran Grant Hussey, a senior and the program record leader in home runs, during his final games in college.

Hussey didn’t get so much as a plate appearance during the Mountaineers’ final game of the season, a 12-5 loss to LSU, and he described the decision as a “slap in the face” on social media in response to a fan after the game.

Before the Super Regional series, Sabins spoke with the media about his approach to playing time decisions. Once they got the call, Guzman and Lumsden excelled, the former earning MVP honors for the regional series while the latter went 2-for-5 with four RBI in their decisive June 1 win over Kentucky.

Steve Sabins gave a lengthy answer — but an answer worth reading — about the soul searching a demotion can cause in young players, especially in the era of the transfer portal where the grass may appear greener on the other side. It is important to note that Sabins did not mention Hussey’s name, but his answer revealed insight on how he makes these types of descisions.

Steve Sabins Speaks Out 

“That’s what this is about. That’s what college sports and competing is about. Currently, it’s very easy to run when things don’t go your way. It’s extremely easy to run, to quit, to think the grass is greener,” Sabins said. “And young people have a decision to make, and it’s becoming increasingly difficult for young people to make the decision to put your feet in, dig in, get better, don’t blame others. It’s not a leadership issue, it could be a you issue: you need to get better. And for young people to look themselves in the mirror and decide what they need to do to get better is incredible and that’s what those young men [Armani Guzman and Ben Lumsden] did.”

WVSN photo by Kelsie LeRose

Accepting the Challenge

As an example, Steve Sabins divulged a tough conversation he held with Lumsden earlier this season over his lack of playing time. While Lumsden appeared in 40 games during the 2025 season, he made just six starts, five of them at the end of the season.

“Ben Lumsden, in the middle of the year, we had a meeting and I was like ‘you want to be here?’ He’s like ‘do you want me here?’ And I was like ‘yeah, yeah I want you here. You’ve just got to get better. You’re not good enough to get on the field right now.’ And he swallowed his pride,” Sabins said.

Courtesy of WVU Athletics

“That’s hard to hear. A guy who was a stud last year, that guy’s got a pro future too, if he keeps getting better. And so he swallowed his pride and he went and worked harder than [he’s] ever worked before, and that’s what this is about. It’s not easy. You have to work harder than everybody else.”

Sabins elaborated that hard work is the foundation of his program: in the world of college sports, with a greater discrepancy than ever between the haves and the have nots, he demands maximum effort from his players in order to compensate for that gap.

WVSN photo by Kelsie LeRose

“LSU’s got good players, Texas’ got good players, Kentucky, guess what? They’ve got really good players, they’ve got good resources. People don’t choose West Virginia over some of those traditional powers all the time,” Sabins said. “We’re not going to be better than them by working half as hard, that’s for damn sure. And so those kids, man, personify what we’re about… Then to get your opportunity after doing that and having success, you can’t draw it up better.”

Baseball, the Brutal Sport

Steve Sabins also acknowledged that Guzman and Lumsden enjoyed the best possible outcome of the challenge he issued them… but rather than coddling players who struggle to make that change, he takes a tough love approach. In a brutal game like baseball, where even the best batters fail more than half the time, Sabins operates via meritocracy.

“It doesn’t always work that way. Unfortunately you can look yourself in the mirror, you can work, you can earn an opportunity and then you can suck and lose that opportunity. And so they bought into the fact that regardless of results, the only path forward is to work and to look at themselves,”

Sabins then elaborated further. 

“Those guys are going to be on a pedestal forever, and when you have exit meetings and when you call players in here and when I’m talking to freshmen that are redshirted and they’re deciding if they want to stay or not, my message is not begging anybody to stay. It’s ’hey, this thing’s really hard. This is the most difficult thing that you’re ever going to do. Armani Guzman’s going to play in the big leagues and he’s a spot starter, and so I don’t want to hear any of your shit. If you want to get better and you want to earn something here, you can earn it. And so those guys bring tears to my eyes, Lumsden and Guzman, what they’ve done.”

For a related story, Steve Sabins put his first season as WVU’s head coach in perspective.