Mountaineers Drop Big 12 Title Game; Begin Prep for NCAA Tournament

#11 Oklahoma State Cowboys: 5

#19 West Virginia Mountaineers: 2

The Mountaineers had an early lead in the Big 12 Championship, but ultimately couldn’t hold onto it, as the OK State Cowboys rallied to win 5-2.

In the bottom of the 3rd, WVU had the bases loaded with nobody out. A run scored as Brandon White grounded into a double play, but that basically killed the inning. The Cowboys limited the damage to just 1 run.

The Cowboys put a 3-spot up in the 5th inning, highlighted by Andrew Navigato’s 2-run double that missed being a home run by about 6 inches.

The usually dominant West Virginia bullpen just wasn’t so in the Championship game, as 4 guys combined to throw 5 innings and give up 5 runs (3 earned).

OSU added 2 insurance runs in the 8th inning on back-to-back singles by McCusker and Garcia to put WVU’s hopes on thin ice.

After Paul McIntosh had a leadoff double to begin the 9th, Ivan Gonzalez grounded out to SS for the first out. Kevin Brophy then grounded out to SS, which allowed McIntosh to score, but brought WVU to the brink of elimination. TJ Lake struck out swinging to deliver Oklahoma State their 4th Big 12 Championship in school history.

West Virginia will now wait and see whether they get to host a regional next weekend in Morgantown. All signs are pointing toward WVU being awarded a regional bid, but we won’t know for sure until the NCAA releases their statement later this evening.

One thing we do know for sure: The Mountaineers are going dancing! We will definitely be in the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2016, and will go in with quite a bit of confidence, having had a pretty successful week in Oklahoma City.

A Big 12 Championship would’ve been nice, but now we turn out focus to the real prize — a national championship. Let’s go!