Photo by Benjamin Powell/The Dominion Post WVU outfielder Sean Smith is hitting .330 with five home runs and 27 RBIs this season.

MORGANTOWN — Sean Smith was brought to West Virginia to hit. That was the reputation the 6-foot-1 outfielder had built for himself during two years of junior college ball in Mississippi and two seasons at Georgia Southern.

The type of hitting Smith displayed was the kind where a .300 batting average was nothing to be proud of. An off year was .321, which is what Smith batted during his first season at Georgia Southern. He rebounded off that by batting .352 with nine home runs a season later.

“The truth is, he’s hit at every level he’s been at,” WVU head coach Steve Sabins said of Smith. “I’d bet he’s a career .365 hitter.”

On March 6, after going 0 for 2 against Columbia, Smith’s batting average with the 15th-ranked Mountaineers sat at .176.

Maybe for the first time in Smith’s career, he was the shooter who had lost his touch; a golfer with a bad case of the shanks. Had he forgotten how to hit? Hardly.

“He’s a really great kid who is a hard worker,” Sabins said. “He’s a consistent person. Every step he’s taken in his career, he’s hit. That’s been the one nonnegotiable. We always believed eventually things were going to drop for him and he would be in a good position.”

Smith will walk into Kendrick Family Ballpark at 6:30 p.m. today, when the Mountaineers (25-8, 10-5 Big 12) host struggling Houston (16-19, 3-12) with a .330 batting average. He’s coming off a stretch of five games in which he’s got 10 hits and seven RBIs, including a four-hit game against Texas Tech last week.

“He’s done an awesome job basically settling in and leading our team this last month,” Sabins said. “He’ll continue to perform well, because that’s what he does.”

The analytics likely point to Smith having another solid series against the Cougars, who are 12th in the Big 12 with a team ERA of 6.11 and enter the three-game series on a four-game losing streak.

What caused his slow start?

“The reality is he stepped up to a better level,” Sabins said. “He’s facing better pitching than he’s ever faced. He’s facing nastier stuff. Not only is he facing better pitching, he’s hitting right in the middle of our order. When you hit in the four-hole in college, there’s not always a ton of guys behind you to protect you all the time.

“A big part of our team is protecting Gavin Kelly and making sure people pitch to him. It would be a different story if Gavin Kelly batted behind Sean Smith. He’d get more pitches to hit then.”

WVU, which is expected to start junior Dawson Montesa (3-4, 5.96 ERA) on the mound for Game 1, has been winning with pitching as of late. In Montesa’s last start, he had one of his better performances of the season, going seven innings and throwing 125 pitches in a 12-8 victory.

Maxx Yehl followed that up going 7 1/3 innings the next day and Chansen Cole went eight innings in the final game of the series.

“We have had these starting pitchers who have gone deep into games and done a really nice job of keeping us in almost every game,” Sabins said. “It’s the best starting pitching we’ve had in my 11 years at West Virginia, as far as the consistency. That’s not really for question.”

WVU enters the Houston series in a tie for second place with No. 21 UCF and both schools are two games back of No. 18 Kansas.

The Jayhawks are at Oklahoma State this weekend, while UCF hosts Cincinnati.