OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Oliver Luck had a decision to make in the fall of 2011, a few weeks after the Big 12 announced the addition of West Virginia effective the following year. Should he recommend dropping what had been a mediocre Big East baseball program or commit to giving the Mountaineers what they needed to be competitive going forward in one of the sport’s top conferences?“Obviously, I was biased toward the latter,” Luck, the school’s athletic director at the time, said this week.It’s been apparent for years Luck made the right choice but never more than now with the Mountaineers set to play in the College World Series for the first time. They will face Troy, also making its CWS debut, on Friday.For West Virginia, the trip to Omaha is the realization of the vision Randy Mazey had when he was hired as coach in June 2012, the summer before his team’s first Big 12 season. Relying on players from traditional recruiting areas in and around the state, as the Mountaineers continue to do, those early teams were surprisingly competitive.
The Mountaineers in 2017 earned their first NCAA Tournament bid in 21 years, hosted a regional in 2019 and were on the road for regionals in 2023. They reached their first super regional in 2024, and after Mazey retired and handed off the program to longtime assistant Steve Sabins, they made supers again in 2025 and 2026.
