11th-Ranked Mountaineers Playing Elite Defense in 2026
May 12, 2026 01:38 PM | Baseball
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By: John Antonik
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – There's an old saying in football that defense wins championships. Well, if that saying also applies to college baseball, then 11th-ranked West Virginia could be onto something really special this year.
The 35-12 Mountaineers recently completed a three-game series sweep at Big 12-leading Kansas last weekend without committing an error. When adding a clean stat sheet in the Marshall victory in Charleston last Tuesday night, that's now 35 consecutive innings of defense without a single miscue.
Defense might be the most overlooked and underappreciated aspect of college baseball these days. For example, how many kids out there do you see posting routine defensive plays on their Instagram, X and TikTok accounts?
When college coaches go out to evaluate prospects, they might get to see a second baseman or shortstop handle three or four plays in the field the one time they are able to watch them in person. It's not like they have unlimited time to go out and observe a player perform on multiple occasions before offering them a scholarship, so there is a fair amount of guesswork involved when it comes to evaluating defense.
"You might have an idea, but when you recruit, you can't sit there and watch 50 games and see the defense of a player unfold, and high school kids are not always (posting) their defense all the time," he said yesterday via Zoom. "It's about hitting, pitching, velocity and all those kinds of things."
In more than 35 years of following college and professional sports, I can't tell you how many times I've heard coaches in different sports talk about "getting to the ball."
Can a player get to the ball?
You hear it all the time in basketball. You hear defensive coaches talk about it repeatedly in football and in baseball it matters as well.
Take a close look at the elite teams in college baseball and all of them have centerfielders who can track down fly balls in the gaps, corner outfielders with strong arms, shortstops who can range to their right and make strong throws across the diamond, third basemen who can hold their ground at the hot corner, nimble first and second basemen with soft hands and the agile footwork required to make difficult plays look routine and reliable catchers who can handle pitchers and control the running game.
When considering the players Sabins is putting out there on a regular basis from first to third, up the middle at catcher, second, short and in center, and what is out there at the corner outfield positions, this is just an excellent defensive ballclub.
Sabins calls it the best he's seen in the 11 years he's coached at West Virginia, including those as Randy Mazey's No. 1 assistant coach.
And it took some tinkering on his part to get this all figured out.
Armani Guzman says he's a shortstop; Sabins believes his professional future is probably in center, yet he's at first base. Sabins calls him "the fastest first baseman" in the country. Last year, when Sabins wasn't comfortable with what he was getting at third, he asked Guzman to fill in there at the Big 12 Tournament.
A week later, he was named the Clemson Regional MVP.
"When I asked him (earlier this year) if he could play first base, he said, 'I'm a shortstop, so of course I can play first.' He's a great first baseman, and he's played exceptionally well there, and he's just so confident now," the coach beamed.
Paul Schoenfeld has been a revelation in center. Some of the plays he has made tracking down balls last weekend in Lawrence had us old timers around here recalling Andy Van Slyke's days with the Pittsburgh Pirates.
Sabins, without hesitation, calls junior college transfer Tyrus Hall the "best third baseman" he's ever coached.
"Bar none," he adds for emphasis.
Middle infielders Matt Ineich at short and Brodie Kresser at second have been consistent all year long, and the corner outfield combination of Brock Wills and Ben Lumsden in right, and Matthew Graveline and Sean Smith in left, possess the arm strength and the athleticism that are sometimes sacrificed at those positions in order to get another bat in the lineup.
Graveline also catches, so he's got one of the better corner outfield arms in college baseball whenever he's out in left.
Then, you go behind the plate where West Virginia has its next budding superstar in Gavin Kelly, a Western Pennsylvania product with some of the same mojo JJ Wetherholt displayed here just a couple of years ago. Kelly, incidentally, has been kind of a big deal lately with six home runs in his last six games.
When Kelly is not throwing out nearly 60% of the runners who have tried to steal on him, he's tagging them out at second when Graveline is behind the dish.
Sabins brought up Buster Posey when describing Kelly, which is pretty remarkable in itself.
"He's a unicorn," the coach says of his sophomore All-America candidate, recently invited to Team USA's Collegiate National Team training camp. "Guys like that just don't exist."
When the season began, Sabins had no idea this defensive alignment would unfold the way it has. Ohio University transfer shortstop Matt Ineich has committed just four errors in 162 total chances so far this season (WVU Athletic Communications photo).
"I was a little bit nervous because I hadn't really had a two-man team behind the plate like we've had with Kelly and Graveline," he admitted. "I haven't really ever changed a middle infielder like we've had with Kresser and Kelly, and I'm a firm believer that you keep those positions relatively consistent for the most part up the middle."
He also wasn't sure what he was getting defensively in Schoenfeld, a Colorado Mesa fifth-year senior transfer. After 47 games with Schoenfeld in center, now he does.
"Schoenfeld did not start as our centerfielder, and he flat-out took that job," Sabins observed. "His grit and ability to get great jumps on balls … he's like a golden retriever jumping off a bridge catching a frisbee."
Collectively, it's one of the most athletic groups the Mountaineers have ever assembled defensively.
"You look at the great teams, and they just don't have the clunky corner outfielders that get you beat (by not catching) bloopers," Sabins observed. "They just don't have the shortstop who doesn't have the quickness to track the ball down in the six-hole and make the play. It's almost like offense and pitching can get you to a serviceable floor and have a good season, but you can't have an elite season without that defense."
Sabins, who has won 74% of his games at WVU for the best winning rate of any coach in school history now with more than 100 games, also adds a caveat.
"You can't just go out and recruit defense first and can't pitch or hit, because then you'll get your ass kicked too," he laughed. "It's having the complete players. This is the best defense that we've had, and it's really crazy the amount of outs that get taken away.
"We've been concentrating on starting pitching, starting pitching, starting pitching; well, the difference is if a guy doesn't get to the ball in the six-hole, you bobble a double-play ball and you don't turn that, all of a sudden those 70 pitches turn into 110 by the sixth and you've got a reliever in there," he added. "Then, you blow the game in the ninth with another reliever and you wonder why. It's because we didn't turn the double play in the fourth and the starter couldn't get to the eighth.
"(Defense) is probably the separator between the good and the great (college baseball teams)," he concluded.
It has certainly put West Virginia in great position with three games left in the regular season, and the conference and NCAA tournaments looming.
