Baylor Bears: 10

West Virginia Mountaineers: 4

West Virginia (13-10) (0-3) had this game in the bag, well, until they didn’t. A furious rally in the final two innings gave the Baylor Bears (16-6) (3-0) a 3-game sweep over the Mountaineers to start Big XII play.

The Bears won the 8-inning affair (a mutually agreed upon shortened game prior to the start due to the travel required of the Mountaineers after the game ended) after scoring 9 runs in the final two innings.

Kade Strowd (2-2, 4.00) was coasting through this start after 6 innings, as he had allowed just 1 run and seemed poised to earn his 3rd win of the season. However, disaster struck in the 7th inning as Baylor was able to tee off on him and score 5 runs before Coach Mazey mercifully removed Strowd from the game. His final line was 6.2 innings, 5 hits, 4 walks, 2 strikeouts and 6 earned runs.

The bullpen, which had been such a strong part of this team coming into this weekend, certainly didn’t help matters, as they allowed 4 more runs to score in the final 1.1 innings. Freshman Beau Lowery (0-2, 5.11 ERA) gave up 1 run without recording an out, and redshirt junior Dillon Meadows (0-0, 5.04 ERA) allowed 3 Bears to cross the plate in the 8th inning.

The Bears had a very balanced offensive attack, simply capitalizing off the 7 free passes that the WVU pitchers allowed them. Andy Thomas, the DH, hit a 3-run home run and had a RBI-walk, while C Shea Langeliers had a 2-RBI double to highlight the scoring for Baylor.

1B Marques Inman, the start of yesterday’s loss, added another RBI to his totals in the 1st inning on a sacrifice fly to left that allowed 2B Tyler Doanes to score from 3rd. 3B Kevin Brophy then had a 2-run single later in the inning to add to the temporary WVU lead, his 15th and 16th RBI’s of the season.

After Baylor got a run back in the 2nd on a RBI single by 2B Josh Bissonette, DH Paul McIntosh hit a solo homer to left field in the top of the 6th to make it 4-1 WVU.

The rest in history. Baylor scored 9 unanswered runs across the 7th and 8th innings, making it 10-4 BU, and putting a cherry on top of their 3-game sweep of the Mountaineers.

West Virginia will return to the mountains later today with a bad taste in their mouth. Luckily, WVU will play 5 straight in The Mountain State as they’ll be traveling down I-79 on Wednesday to play our little brother, Marshall University (14-8) (4-2 C-USA) at the Charleston Power Park on Wednesday evening at 6:00 PM. After that, they’ll welcome the Oklahoma Sooners (21-4) (3-0) to Morgantown for a weekend series, followed by the Pitt Panthers (7-15) (1-8 ACC) on April 3rd. It’s paramount that WVU earn at least 3 wins in this next stretch, as they need to play themselves back into the Big XII picture before it’s too late.