Baseball Notebook
April 24, 2008 03:55 PM | General
April 24, 2008
UCONN PREVIEW (mp3 download)
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Although the Big East tournament is still a month away, what West Virginia does between now and then will determine whether or not the Mountaineers get there.
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| Reliever Chris Enourato has had a hand in 10 of West Virginia's 29 wins so far this year with a 4-0 record and six saves.
All-Pro Photography/Dale Sparks photo |
West Virginia (29-11) is presently 8-7 in Big East play after beginning the conference portion of its schedule with a 6-3 record. The Mountaineers have a difficult three-game home series with Connecticut this weekend, then they travel to second-place St. John’s for a three-game series May 2-4, play three at home against fifth-place Louisville May 10-11, and wrap up conference play on the road for three at third-place Cincinnati May 15-17.
“You never know how many wins it’s going to take and we still have a lot of work to do,” said West Virginia coach Greg Van Zant. “We’ve got a team coming in that if we can win the series that would give us the advantage over them for a playoff spot.”
Despite playing five home and four road series West Virginia doesn’t have the benefit of facing either Villanova or Georgetown this season. The Wildcats are presently 10th in the league standings with a 5-10 record while Georgetown is at the bottom of the Big East with a 4-14 mark.
“You never know who is going to be an advantage or a disadvantage to skip and the way the schedule worked out this year we skipped Georgetown and Villanova,” Van Zant said. “Who is to say we would beat them? You just don’t know.”
Right now every team is still mathematically alive for postseason play with a month left in the regular season and just three games separate teams five through 10 in the conference standings. The Mountaineers are tied with Louisville for fifth place with 12 games to go. Last year, 10-win Connecticut beat out West Virginia for the final spot in the tournament due to a tiebreaker and South Florida got into the eight-team tournament in 2006 with 12 wins.
“We haven’t looked at the standings all season long and there is no use doing it right now. We’re just going to try and win as many games as we can,” Van Zant said.
At the same time, West Virginia controls its own destiny.
“We don’t have to worry about getting help from people,” Van Zant said. “If we just play well and win some games we should make the tournament.”
Van Zant reiterates that his team’s primary goal each year is to win the conference. However, with Notre Dame now four games ahead in the standings and owning the tiebreaker over the Mountaineers that is unlikely.
“We’re just not trying to win enough games to make the tournament,” Van Zant said. “Then if it looks like you’re not going to win the regular season then you just try to win as many games so you can finish as high in the standings as you can.”
The last time West Virginia made the NCAA tournament in 1996 the Mountaineers were three games below .500 with a month left in the regular season. Then West Virginia won 11 of its last 13 games to win the Big East tournament.
“Our ’96 team’s overall record was only 33-25 but down the stretch when it counted we played really well,” Van Zant said. “Everybody looks back at that as one of the best teams we ever had here and in reality it was one of the best teams we ever had here for the last 15 games.
“We got hot at the end of the season and our team is capable of that.” Van Zant said. “We’ve got some pitchers that have thrown well at times and we hit the ball.”
Van Zant says it all starts with this weekend’s three-game series with the Huskies.
“Our players know the value of these games,” he said. “Our last 14 games and hopefully some postseason games are by far the most important games of our season. As a baseball team you want to play well down the stretch.”
Friday night’s game against Connecticut is Dollar Night, will all tickets and select concessions available for $1 each. WAJR AM-1440 and U-92 will carry the game live on the radio. First pitch is 7:05 pm.
Briefly:
West Virginia coach Greg Van Zant takes exception to those RPI rankings.
“This conference is so good and it’s really too bad the way the RPI system is set up,” Van Zant said. “It doesn’t favor our conference and it doesn’t reflect the strength of our league. I’ve seen different people throwing around projections of just one team from the Big East (getting into the tournament) and our league is so much stronger than the vast majority of other leagues getting one team. Because of where we are geographically located it’s tough to have a good RPI.”
Just four Big East teams, St. John’s (No. 59), Notre Dame (No. 83), South Florida (No. 85) and West Virginia (No. 96), are ranked in the top 100 this week.
“The game has a way of evening things out. In all honesty we probably played well enough to win one at Seton Hall and played well enough to win one against Notre Dame,” Van Zant said. “Notre Dame outplayed us in two of the three games but we weren’t that far away from two out of three both weekends.”
