Mazey Putting Mountaineer Baseball Back on the Map

D1Baseball.com Poll
Ranking, School	Record	Previous
1. Wake Forest	42-8	1
2. Arkansas	38-13	3
3. Stanford	34-14	4
4. Florida	40-12	7
5. LSU	39-12	2
6. West Virginia	39-13	12
7. Clemson	35-17	16
8. Coastal Carolina	33-17	8
9. Connecticut	38-12	9
10. Oregon State	36-15	15
11. Miami, Fla.	34-17	11
12. Vanderbilt	35-16	5
13. South Carolina	37-14	6
14. Campbell	39-11	13
15. East Carolina	38-14	14
16. Duke	34-16	10
17. Dallas Baptist	40-12	18
18. Tennessee	35-17	23
19. Kentucky	35-15	17
20. Maryland	35-18	19
21. Virginia	41-11	21
22. Boston College	32-16	20
23. Southern Miss	35-15	25
24. Washington	32-15	NR
25. Oklahoma State	35-15	NR

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – So, what were you doing back in 1963?

The year John F. Kennedy was assassinated was also the last time a West Virginia University baseball team was doing this well on the diamond.

That Mountaineer squad, led by Hall of Fame coach Steve Harrick, a junior shortstop named Dale Ramsburg and a dominant pitching staff that included Joe Jeran, Dave Wilson, Wendell Backus and fireball freshman lefthander John Radosevich, won 14 straight to begin the season. Its first loss came in the first game of a doubleheader to Richmond at old Hawley Field, located about where the gold parking lot is today at the WVU Coliseum.

They won 15 more in a row after that to finish the regular season with a nation's-best 29-1 record and a No. 3 national ranking by Tucson, Arizona-based Collegiate Baseball Magazine – the sport's authority back then.

The Mountaineers lost the opening game of the NCAA District 3 Tournament at Sims Legion Park in Gastonia, North Carolina, to fourth-ranked Wake Forest, battled back in the loser's bracket to eliminate Auburn, and then fell to the Demon Deacons in the loser's bracket final. Florida State ended up beating Wake Forest to claim the District 3 title and advancing to the College World Series where the Seminoles were eventually knocked out by national champion USC.

That '63 season is considered the pinnacle of success for WVU baseball.

Well, today, 60 years later, West Virginia is once again entering that stratosphere. The Mountaineers have returned to college baseball's top 10 at No. 6 in this week's D1baseball.com poll, which is officially recognized by the NCAA. The baseball writers (NCBWA) also have the Mountaineers rated sixth.

Baseball America, which has been ranking college baseball teams since 1980, has WVU ranked seventh, the same as USA Today's College Baseball Poll, which represents the coaches.

It's the first time West Virginia has ever reached the top 10 in either of those two polls following last weekend's 5-3 series victory over 25^th-ranked Texas Tech.

Mazey's Mountaineers (39-13) are now one win shy of matching Ramsburg's 1994 squad for the most victories in school history and remain in great shape to host an NCAA Tournament regional for the second time since 2019, which also happened under Mazey.

Since Mazey's arrival in 2013, West Virginia has been consistently establishing new benchmarks of success. WVU snapped its 21-year NCAA Tournament drought in 2017 and made its first-ever appearance in the USA Today poll on April 17 that season.

Two years later, led by first-rounder Alek Manoah, WVU ended the year ranked 20^th after hosting an NCAA Tournament regional for the first time since 1955. That was the first time since 1982 a West Virginia baseball team finished the season ranked in any poll.

Presently, the Mountaineers are just one victory away from earning at least a share of their first-ever Big 12 regular season championship, and their 15 wins are the most ever in Big 12 play with three games remaining at Texas.

Winning two out of three against the Longhorns guarantees an outright regular season championship.

Heading into this weekend's action, West Virginia's record over the last two seasons is 72-35, including a 29-16 mark in conference play. The Mountaineers felt they should have received an NCAA Tournament bid last season.

As we wind down the regular season, a strong finish and a run in the Big 12 Tournament could even earn West Virginia a top-eight national seeding. That's not out of the question.

What is out of the question is catching Mazey looking too far down the road.

"They're kids," the coach explained after Saturday's 17-2 victory over the Red Raiders. "They get on social media and they see projections and they know what all of that stuff means. But as a coaching staff, you've got to coach these kids more when you're having a season like this than you do when you are not because you've got to keep them focused."

Being in position to win an outright Big 12 championship was not even remotely on WVU's radar a decade ago when West Virginia joined the Big 12. There were many unhappy coaches in the Big 12 when West Virginia got into the league because they felt the Mountaineers were going to drag down the conference's RPI.

But a couple things happened. Then-director of athletics Oliver Luck called some people he knew and trusted in professional baseball, including Arizona Diamondbacks owner and WVU alum Ken Kendrick and Pittsburgh Pirates owner Bob Nutting, and they gave him access to their top minor league people. What they told Luck was to find a new baseball coach and not get too caught up in hiring someone from the Deep South.

Find a coach who knew and understood this part of the country who could project and develop players. There might be someone like a JJ Wetherholt from Mars, Pennsylvania, who is every bit as good as a Dylan Crews from Longwood, Florida, but has played far fewer games up here because of the weather.

Luck listened to them and hired TCU pitching coach Randy Mazey, a former Clemson player who grew up in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, just two hours from Morgantown.

Then, Luck convinced the State Legislature to approve a Tax Increment Financing district in order to construct Monongalia County Ballpark, which was completed in 2014.

Once those two things happened, the trajectory of the program changed dramatically.

What is happening today is unprecedented in the modern history of Mountaineer baseball. Mazey, who once led Charleston Southern to an NCAA regional in 1996 and East Carolina to an NCAA Super Regional in 2004, said he gets satisfaction out of the joy and pride his team is bringing to the University, the community and the state.

"For me personally, I would feel really good for the community and all of the residents in West Virginia to be able to hang their hats on something that's never been done before," he said.

The community has already embraced his team. More than 10,000 showed up for a recent three-game weekend series against Oklahoma, including a facility-record 4,387 on Saturday, May 6.

More than 4,000 fans braved 45-degree weather on a Wednesday night to watch West Virginia's run-rule victory over Pitt, and nearly 60,000 came through the turnstiles for the season.

The first time WVU experienced these types of crowds during the 2019 NCAA Regional, Mazey admitted his players weren't fully prepared for it.

"I think the huge crowd worked against us because that was the first one and our kids were just as rattled in that atmosphere as the other team," he explained. "Now, we're getting kind of used to it. We're throwing 4,000 a game in here when the weather is nice, and our kids are responding to it much better now. It's a good sign.

"I would personally like to thank all 4,000 of them if I could. Thank you, guys."

And thank you, Randy Mazey, your assistant coaches and your players for putting WVU baseball back on the map!

Schedule

Players Mentioned

JJ Wetherholt

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