Stayin' Alive
May 09, 2010 11:14 PM | General
May 10, 2010
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - The way Greg Van Zant sees things, his young baseball team is now 3-0 after sweeping Notre Dame in a three-game weekend series in Morgantown.
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| Junior Grant Buckner demolished Notre Dame pitching, going 8 for 12 with four home runs and 14 RBI during the three-game weekend series.
All-Pro Photography/Dale Sparks photo |
Not took long ago, the new father (his wife Leslie gave birth to their daughter Reese Carolyn last Wednesday) watched his club lose 14 of 19 games in April, including three-game sweeps against Connecticut, Pitt, Louisville and Cincinnati.
After the Cincinnati series when the Bearcats limited West Virginia to only nine runs, Van Zant got his team together and told them to focus their attention on the remaining 12 games of the season. Either they would finish strong and somehow sneak into the Big East tournament, or they would use those remaining games as a springboard into 2011.
"I just told them to forget about everything," Van Zant said. "I told our pitchers to try and throw more strikes, our hitters to hit the ball hard and our fielders not to worry about making errors. The past is done. Don't beat yourselves up."
In many ways this season has been the perfect storm for West Virginia, now 21-26 after Sunday's 10-3 victory over Notre Dame. Van Zant knew he was going to be fielding a very young team in 2010 with nine freshmen on the roster. He needed to find replacements for three of his top five hitters, a pro catcher (Tobias Streich), a pro first baseman (Joe Agreste) and a nine-game winner on the mound (Billy Gross).
Then the first weekend of the season, last year's leading hitter, Dan DiBartolomeo, also needed to be replaced when he was lost for the year after blowing out his shoulder during batting practice.
"When he walked off the field in Myrtle Beach I had a sick feeling in my stomach, not only for Dan, but also for the way our season was heading," Van Zant admitted.
DiBartolomeo, a .439 hitter last year, was supposed to bat in front of Jedd Gyorko, West Virginia's best pro prospect since Chris Enochs was taken in the first round in 1997. But when DiBartolomeo went down, that cemented Van Zant's decision to use Gyorko in the leadoff spot so other teams could not pitch around his best hitter.
Gyorko has had another outstanding year, hitting .369 with a team-best 15 home runs and 50 RBI through 47 games, but the rest of his teammates have been slower to catch up.
"About a month ago our team batting average was .270," said Van Zant. "It has taken some of them a while."
Van Zant says the two hitters that have developed the quickest are freshman Chris Rasky and junior Jeremy Gum. Rasky, an Irwin, Pa., resident, is now hitting .353 with five home runs and 18 RBI in 27 games while Bridgeport's Gum is hitting .341 with four home runs and 16 RBI in 34 games.
"These kids have really stepped it up," said Van Zant.
Junior Grant Buckner is also playing his best ball of the year. Buckner drove in 10 runs in the first game of Saturday's doubleheader against the Irish, and finished the weekend 8 of 12 at the plate with four home runs and 14 RBI to raise his batting average to .364.
Overall, the team is now hitting .307 - more than 30 points higher than it was just three weeks ago. The pitching staff, despite an inflated 6.91 earned run average, is also finding the strike zone more frequently.
Plus, Notre Dame is not Connecticut, Pitt or Louisville. The Huskies and Panthers are both likely headed for 40-win seasons, and the Cardinals presently have the fifth-best RPI in college baseball. All three teams are certain to make the NCAA tournament.
"We haven’t had three teams in the Big East this good since I can remember," said Van Zant. "Who would have thought Pitt and UConn would have the two best teams in school history?"
The veteran coach correctly points out that his team has faced one of the toughest schedules in school history. The Mountaineers have played 21 games against Top 100 teams so far this year, going 2-19 in those games including an 0-12 mark against teams in the Top 50. Consequently, WVU's 109 RPI is very similar to last year's team that won 37 games and finished third in the Big East. The Mountaineers' RPI last year was 98.
"This team is really not that different from some of the other teams we've had," Van Zant explained. "In the whole scheme of things, we are not a bad baseball team."
Still, Van Zant could sense his team getting down on itself when the losses were beginning to pile up late last month.
"We had a couple of stretches when we were feeling sorry for ourselves," said Van Zant. "We just tried to stay positive with them and tried to build them back up."
Van Zant singled out three tough losses to St. John's, Louisville and Cincinnati that could have easily gone in the W column for the Mountaineers had his batters produced a timely hit or his pitchers thrown more strikes. Winning those games would have given West Virginia nine league victories instead of the six it currently has. On the other hand, Van Zant says Connecticut, Louisville and Pitt were clearly the superior baseball teams.
"There were times when we had our lunches handed to us and you just have to tip your cap to the other team," said Van Zant. "We just told our guys to be patient, continue to work hard and eventually you will see improvement."
That improvement finally came this weekend against a struggling Notre Dame team that has now lost five in a row and shows 27 losses for the season.
"They've had injuries just like us, but wins have always been hard to come by against Notre Dame," said Van Zant. "We've never been able to sweep them a three-game series since I've been here."
More importantly, the series sweep keeps West Virginia's postseason hopes alive. The Mountaineers are presently two wins out of eighth place with six conference games remaining at Georgetown (May 14-16) and at home against Villanova (May 20-22).
The Hoyas are below West Virginia in the standings with four league wins, while Villanova is one game ahead of the Mountaineers with seven victories.
To catch either Notre Dame or Cincinnati, West Virginia is going to have to win at least four of its remaining six league games. The Mountaineers still need to pick up two games on Notre Dame or three on Cincinnati just to get into eighth place.
"We never talked once about sweeping Notre Dame," said Van Zant. "We are just trying to win the next game. Twelve wins have gotten a team into the tournament every year since they went to the eight-team format. We've just got to take care of us."
