Photo courtesy of BlueandGoldnews.Com WVU’s Brodie Kresser makes a play in a losing effort to LSU in the Super Regionals.

MORGANTOWN — A season born in the glow of success ended in the dust of defeat for West Virginia University’s baseball team as No. 6 LSU annihilated and eliminated WVU from the NCAA College Championships, 12-5.

With the victory, the Bayou Tigers advanced to the College World Series for the 20th time while the Mountaineers fell short of that once again after reaching the Super Regional for the second straight season.

WVU was in self-destruct mode down the stretch of this season. After winning 18 of the season’s first 19 games and going on to set a school record with 44 wins to go with 16 losses, taking their second Big 12 regular season title in three years and sweeping the Clemson Regional, they finished the year losing nine of their last 14 games.

LSU moves forward with a 48-15 record.

While it will go into the books as a promising and successful debut season for head coach Steve Sabins, the final stretch will serve as an incentive to push even harder to take the final jump into an elite NCAA program.

In the end, the pitching and defense let the Mountaineers down. Over the last 14 games, they gave up 117 runs, 40 of them coming in the final three games.

In the two-game Super Regional they threw an incredible 405 pitches, 221 of them for strikes, walking 17 batters and hitting 8.

Electricity filled the air as game time approached, but it wasn’t the kind the Mountaineers could draw upon.

Fact is there was lightning in the area and the decision was made rather than to start and stop and maybe mess up one or both of these tournament teams’ pitchers they would take a cautious approach. And so, they waited and waited and waited, even though it wasn’t raining.

In the end they waited three hours before getting the game started.

The lightning was gone but there was still a whole lot of thunder in the LSU bats as they jumped off to a 6-0 lead through two innings against right-hander Jack Kartsonas, who was obviously troubled by something.

The man with college baseball’s best fu manchu mustache, Kartsonas had walked only 16 batters all year but he struggled with his control, throwing 27 pitches in the first inning as he gave up one run and then, after retiring the first two batters in the second, he walked three straight batters.

He seemed completely empty though and LSU collected three straight hits — a double by Steven Milam with the bases loaded that scored all three, a single by Jake Brown that scored another and then, after a wild pitch, an RBI single by Jared Jones.

That made it a five-run rally and Kartsonas’ day was over.

“He was struggling. He was battling a little bit of sickness,” Sabins revealed during an in-game interview from the dugout. “I think the heat got to him a little bit.”

Chase Meyer, who probably has the best stuff on the Mountaineer staff, came on and while he also had some control troubles, he got away with them as he awaited the WVU offense to come to life.

That was asking a lot against Anthony Eyanson, who has been the hottest pitcher in baseball the second half of the season with an ERA barely above 1.00.

Early on, he had the Mountaineers swinging and missing at curveballs in the dirt, striking out the first four with the catcher having to throw each one at first base.

But by the fourth inning WVU was adjusting, not chasing that sharp curve that he would spin into the dirt, and the offense did come to life.

Sam White led off with a long home run to right-center to get some more comeback talk flowing in the dugout from a team that had come from behind in 26 games this season.

Then, with two out, Jace Rinehart singled to left and Ben Lumsden scorched a line drive into the right field seats and all of a sudden, the lead was down to 6-3.

“Our offense is going to get you eventually,” Sabins said during that same in-game interview from the dugout. “It’s just a matter of time.”

You could almost sense the confidence growing in the Mountaineers as the fifth inning came around, Armani Guzman drawing a leadoff walk, taking second on a wild pickoff throw, daringly advancing to third on a ground ball to short, making a nifty slide to beat the tag and survive a replay.

Then, after Kyle West struck out, Sam White laced a base hit to left field to score Guzman and make it 6-4.

Meyer had put a silencer on the Tigers’ offense, tacking four straight zeroes on the board and Sabins was planning to ride him as far as he could go.

But that was about as far as he could go in the heat. He coaxed the leadoff batter to hit a routine pop fly behind second, but Gavin Kelly, who had let an earlier pop that should have been caught fall for a single, messed this one up too.

You can’t do that to your pitcher, especially as he’s beginning to wilt and Meyer walked the next batter and hit the following one to load the bases with no one out.

Sabins had to go get Meyer and brought in Reese Bassinger, but No. 9 hitter Chris Stanfield crossed up all the strategy with a ground ball single to right that drove in two runs, widening the gap to 8-4 with still no one out and the top of the order back up.

WVU’s generosity on defense was to continue as two more Mountaineer errors, both on throws by catcher Logan Suave and shortstop Brodie Kresser, opened the door for four more runs to score, three of them on Jake Brown’s 417-foot home run to straightaway centerfield.

Down two entering the seventh, LSU came out with a 12-4 lead and with the team’s travel director making reservations for the College World Series in Omaha.

WVU got one run back on a majestic home run by Jace Rinehart through the night and into the pine trees far beyond the left-centerfield fence.