No. 24 West Virginia ups its winnings streak to 14 games, could they host a regional?

Jace Rinehart, Photo via WVU athletics

By James Gravley

Well, well, well, don’t tell anyone yet, but West Virginia could potentially host a regional if they keep playing like they have been over the current 14-game span.

This week, like many, has been good to the Mountaineers. First, surviving the spoiled upset attempt by Marshall in the midweek by a score of 5-4, followed by a clean sweep over Cincinnati, and capped off with an impressive 10-5 victory on Saturday.

The Mountaineers now are 34-4 overall and sit at 13-3 in the Big 12. At the beginning of the series against Cincinnati, WVU was outside the Top 20 in RPI, and as of late, they currently sit at No. 14.

WVU is 3-3 versus Quad 1 opponents, 7-0 versus Quad 2 opponents, 12-1 versus Quad 3 opponents, and 12-0 versus Quad 4 opponents. They’ve moved up a total of eight spots in the RPI on Warren Nolan.

West Virginia entered this week ranked nationally at No. 24 by D1 Baseball. They’ve been ranked by other media outlets, but D1 is the one nationally recognized for college baseball rankings. With that said, and this current winning streak by the Mountaineers, do not be surprised to see them ranked inside the Top 20 — possibly even the Top 15 — and if they are ranked inside the Top 15 at season's end, they could be hosting their own regional instead of traveling elsewhere to play in the postseason.

West Virginia is just one-of-three teams who are ranked inside the Top 20 in RPI with Arizona coming in at No. 16 and TCU right behind at No. 17.

Regardless of the strength of schedule — which doesn’t favor WVU — they should be highly considered to host three other teams in the regionals. Those teams could potentially include Arizona, Xavier, CalPoly, Coastal Carolina, Oklahoma and maybe even Florida. However, it’s way too early to even tell if WVU would host a regional, but they most certainly will be participating in one.

Jace Rinehart and Logan Sauve lead the way for the Mountaineers in home runs with seven, while Grant Hussey is second overall with six home runs of his own.

Rinehart has been one of the hottest hitters for WVU this season as he owned two separate seven-game hitting streaks and is now working on another small hitting streak as he now has a three-game hitting streak. Oddly enough, his hitting streaks and hot hitting go cold against anyone not in the Big 12. Rinehart has hit safely at least one time in all 16 Big 12 games played this season.

West Virginia returns to the diamond on Tuesday as they travel to take on Penn State for a midweek on Tuesday, April 22 with first pitch scheduled for 5:30 PM. After that they’ll head to Orlando for a three-game set against UCF starting on Friday, April 25 through Sunday, April 27. The game against Penn State will be on the Big Ten Network while the three against UCF will be on ESPN+.

As for UCF, they currently sit 22-17 overall and 6-12 in the Big 12, just won the series against TCU and won their midweek against Florida A&M. This will be the only time that WVU and UCF play in the regular season.

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