WVU edging closer to first Big 12 baseball regular season title

Those are the only four teams still in contention for at least a share of the league regular season title

West Virginia has different scenarios to eliminate each of its pursuers from the race. Kansas State hosts TCU in its final three games, and can only earn a share of the league title if it sweeps the Horned Frogs and sees WVU swept by Texas, which it visits for a three-game set beginning this Thursday.

In that case, all three teams would be tied for first with a 15-9 league record, and Texas would win the three-way tiebreaker with a combined 5-1 record against the other two.

Any Mountaineer win or Wildcat loss knocks the latter out of contention.

WVU’s magic number to eliminate Oklahoma State is two — any combination of two West Virginia wins and/or two Cowboy losses knocks the Pokes out of the race. If the teams tie with a 16-8 conference record, the Mountaineers would hold the edge in the tiebreaker, as they downed OSU 2-1 in the regular season series.

For WVU and Texas, it’s simple. Any WVU win puts the Mountaineers clear of the Horns, while UT must win all three games to tie the Mountaineers in the league standings and earn the tiebreaker advantage.

Winning the league and getting the No. 1 seed obviously carries a good deal of prestige, and would be another step toward hosting a regional and perhaps even earning a national see in the NCAAs, but even before that there are benefits.

The top seed gets an optimal game time in the first round of the Big 12 Championship, facing the No. 8 seed at 12:30 p.m. CT on the first day of the event. Win there, and it gets a 4 p.m. slot the next day.

Both of those are familiar start times for teams, and avoids the early slot (9 a.m.) or the late game of the day, which often doesn’t get underway until well after its listed 7:30 start time.

Ahead of that, though, there’s that conference title to work for. WVU has won its league regular season crown 14 times, most recently in 1996 as a member of the Big East.

It also has six Southern Conference titles, including a run of five in seven years between 1961-67, and five straight in the Eastern 8 (1984-88).

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With Sunday’s win over Texas Tech, head coach Randy Mazey won his 39th game at the helm of the Mountaineer program — his highest total in his 11 seasons in that position. That topped the 38 games WVU won in 2019, when it hosted an NCAA regional.

He’s still, however a fair distance from his best ever total as a head coach.

That came at East Carolina in 2004, when the Pirates racked up 51 wins while winning the Conference USA title and advancing to an NCAA Super Regional.

WVU is one win away from matching the most wins it has ever recorded in a season. That total of 40 came in 1994.

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Baylor has been eliminated from contention for a spot in the Big 12 Championships.

That leaves Kansas (7-14) as the current No. 8 seed.

To move out of that spot, it would have to sweep Texas Tech, which it faces this weekend, which would give it a tie-breaker over the Red Raiders.

Any Tech win will make the Jayhawks the No. 8 seed in the Championship.