WVU falls to Arizona in semis
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MORGANTOWN -- West Virginia may be the Big 12 regular season champion but the Mountaineers learned they still have a way to go to be counted among college baseball's elites.
Arizona, one of the sports' true elite programs, totally outclassed WVU as they eliminated them from the Big 12 championship, 12-1, in the semifinal round.
It was a disheartening end to a Big 12 season that had so many highlights, one in which they recorded a school record 41 victories, including win streaks of 13 and 14 games, but that ended in the throngs of a deep slump that saw them lose seven of their last nine games.
Unable to control the Wildcats' shortstop Mason White, who turned in a four-for-four performance that included two home runs, a double, two walks, six runs batted in and four scored, WVU never knew what hit it
"They came out swinging the bats from the very first inning," coach Steve Sabins said of Arizona, which had 17 hits.
This was an Arizona program that had been there before. While the Mountaineers are looking to reach their first college World Series, the Wildcats are looking to make the field for college baseball's greatest event for the 18th time, already owning four National Championships in 1976, 1980, 1986 and 2012.
While they did not have as good a regular season as they may have expected, they played a killer schedule and have seen it pay off as they prepare to play either Kansas or TCU, who met in the second semifinal game Friday night.
As the day started, coach Steve Sabins had a decision to make as to his starting pitcher. He had Jack Kartsonas ready and fresh, but do you run him out there in the semifinal game or try to get by with a bullpen day, starting off the talented but sometimes erratic Robby Porco?
Kartsonas, a senior transfer, had been carrying the hot hand since they moved him into the starting rotation. The 6-4, 220-pound right-hander with the menacing mustache from Pittsburgh got his first start on April 1 and took charge almost immediately.
He rang up five quality outings among his six starts leading into Friday's game, which tipped Sabins in his direction as the starter.
You don't want to hold him for a championship game that may never come. This was especially true since the bullpen had been ineffective over the past couple of weeks.
"He's a workhorse," Sabins said. "He and Griffin Kirn have really separated themselves as far as senior leaders that want the ball who are really fighting for the team. Every day is a good day when Kirn or Kartsonas is out there."
Kirn had cranked up a big game to open the tournament in beating Cincinnati, 10-3, with a complete game on Thursday and now it was up to Kartsonas, who had worked his way through John Carroll and Kent State before taking the big time challenge at WVU.
But Kartsonas struggled to find himself in the early going. His stuff was good but inconsistent and, after two quick outs in the first, Mason White took him to school with a home run over the opposite field wall in left for a 1-0 lead in the first that Arizona would never give up.
Kartsonas got through the second inning but, in the third, he issued a two-out walk to White, then let a pitch get away from him into the dirt.
If you were looking for indications of what was going on with Kartsonas, this was certainly one of them. He had thrown only two wild pitches in 55 innings coming into the game but that was his third wild pitch in three innings.
It came back to haunt him as Adonys Guzman bounced his second single of the game through the middle to score White and it was a 2-0 game, bringing Sabins to the mound for a calm-down-now-son talk, which worked as he followed with his fourth strikeout of the evening to end the inning.
The Wildcats were just warming up, though. Didn't matter what WVU did, Arizona had an answer for it while they had no answer for Mason White or Guzman.
In the fifth inning, Kartsonas ran out of gas. Brendan Summerhill opened with a perfect drag bunt single, then Aaron Walton singled to left.
Now you had two on, none out, a tiring Kartsonas having to deal with the torrid White, who promptly drove one to the deepest part of Globe Life Field, straightaway center. Skylar King went to the wall and climbed it but he would have needed a ladder to get this second home run of the game for White.
The three-shot served as an exclamation point on Kartsonas's outing, which forced his exit and Arizona had a 5-0 advantage.
"He was throwing his breaking balls for balls today," Sabins said. "They were taking off-speed pitches easier than normal. He gets more swings and misses on his off-speed pitches but today they weren't biting at it because I thought they were starting out below the zone."
In the fifth they added two more runs, one driven in by Guzman with his third hit of the evening and you felt it was time to get the engine fired up on the airplane that would bring the Mountaineers home.
While this was going on, though, the Wildcats were putting on a display with the leather in addition to with their bats, turning three double plays to short circuit any attempt WVU had at clawing its way back into it.
In the seventh, with Chase Meyer on to pitch, Aaron Walton cut Meyer's evening short with a two-run double to make it 9-0.
Arizona's White would get to hit again in the seventh inning and he made it 10-0 with an RBI single, his third hit off a third different pitcher, to go with two walks.
"They had a chance to 10-run us in the seventh inning but we scored a run and showed life," Sabins said.
But White he wasn't done.
In the ninth he came up one final time against David Hagen -- yes, another pitcher -- and singled in his sixth run of the evening with his fourth hit to make it 11-1.
"We didn't play the best brand of baseball," Sabins admitted. "We have to recoup and get ready for a regional."
Now WVU awaits its NCAA fate. While they at one point were hoping to possibly be in play to host a Regional and maybe a Super Regional, they now will wind up trying to reincarnate themselves in someone else's house.
Sabins, however, holds out hope that the NCAA will give WVU a chance to play at home in the Regional.
"Warm, and the good beaches of Morgantown," Sabins said when asked if he had a preference where he'd like to play in a Regional. "We have the best fan base in the country. We have an incredible stadium. We sold out season tickets, set attendance records and just broke the all-time win record for our program so we'd like to celebrate with our people."
But Sabins knows it isn't his decision to make.
"I am not the committee. I don't make those decisions so I'm not going to pretend to have all the answers when it comes to that. We just have to get out and try to play really good baseball.
"Winning always solves everything. Good things happen when you win. That's always going to be our goal. Put a good product on the field and win."