Clark, WVU win opener in NCAA tourney
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MORGANTOWN -- It was hot but Derek Clark stayed cool as the West Virginia left-hander pitched the third-seeded Mountaineers into the winner's bracket of the double-elimination Tucson Regional of the NCAA Baseball Championships with a 4-hit, complete game 4-1 victory over No. 2 seed Dallas Baptist Friday afternoon.
Catcher Logan Suave bounced back from hitting into a first-inning double play and provided Clark all the offense he would need with a three-homer in the third inning, a drive that carried 435-feet through the dry desert air and cleared the batter's eye in center field off loser Ryan Johnson.
Suave also added a single in the sixth and scored the final Mountaineer run on a RBI double by Reed Chumley.
With the victory, WVU advances to meet the winner of top-seeded Arizona, the host team, and Grand Canyon, who played late Friday night. The game will be played far into the night with a 10 p.m. start time at Hi Corbett Field.
From the first pitch, it was obvious that coach Randy Mazey had made the right decision last week when he passed over his best pitcher in the Big 12 Tournament rather than to pitch him on short rest. He was fresh and sharp as he baffled a strong Dallas Baptist lineup with an eight-strikeout, no-walk performance.
Even with the Arizona sun beating down on the field in the middle of the desert and the thermometer showing 96 degrees, Clark was efficient with his pitchers, barely slipping past the 100-pitch mark as he changed speeds and arm angles to baffle a lineup that had hit 122 home runs while winning 44 games entering the tournament..
Clark knew going into this game that he was prepared for the opponent and the weather.
"The extended time off was really nice; just preparing the mind and the body going into a regional," he said before the team left Morgantown for the adventurous trip West. "Everyone is now 0 and 0 and I'm going into it with that mindset. It doesn't take much to get ready in the heat. A couple of arm circles and get on the mound."
He said he knew he was ready from the time he got up in the morning.
"Right when I woke up this morning I knew I was going to be ready," Clark said. "I had the week and a half to prepare, fixed up some things."
His fast ball pushed 90 and he threw it for strikes but he kept the hitters off balance all day with changing speeds and living up to the title of pitcher. In an era where they treasure MPH over ERA, pitchers have become throwers who look for strikeouts while pitching is becoming a lost art.
The art was probably best put best long ago in the glory days of the Mickey Mantle-Yogi Berra New York Yankees when Eddie Lopat, a crafty southpaw like Clark, described the art of pitching to his teammate Allie Reynolds.
"Take your four pitches -- the fast ball, the curve, the slider and the screwball. Now throw these at different speeds and you have 12 pitches. Next, throw each of these 12 pitches with a long-armed or short-armed motion and you have 24 pitches," Lopat said.
And that was the approach Clark took as he performed his magic and won his 8th game in 10 decisions in his final college baseball season. Despite missing the first month with an injury, his ERA dropped below 3.00 as he outdueled Johnson, who entered the game with an 11-2 record and the second lowest ERA in the nation at 1.98.
"I introduced him to a crowd of fans the night before we left Morgantown and I said 'Our fate on Friday is in this guy's hands and I wouldn't want it in any other player's hands," Mazey said of Clark. "It 's incredible what he's done.
"This was the pitching matchup that was being hyped as the one to watch out for," Mazey went on. "You got the little lefty with all the heart against the big tall righty with all the stuff. The heart won today for sure. That's how he won. That's how he always wins … with heart."
Clark dominated until the final inning and that was when he really had to call upon his heart … and his defense.
The first two hitters hit screaming line drives but first baseman Grant Hussey and second baseman Brodie Kessler made difficult catches to keep the bases clear.
Of course, Clark had helped himself on defense along the way.
"The one thing that goes unnoticed is in the first inning he fields a ball behind his back and gets an out and then he picks a guy off first base," Mazey said. "That's not unusual for him, to make a great play and pick at least one guy off first base.
"That has a lot to do with why he's done so well. I think he won a Gold Glove in Division II last year. I don't know if they have a Gold Glove in Division I but if they do it dang sure belongs to this guy. He changes the results by how good he is at fielding his position and controlling the running game."