In this file photo, West Virginia’s Grant Hussey runs the bases during a game against Ohio University. Hussey tallied two RBI in WVU’s narrow 5-4 victory over Marshall on Tuesday.

MORGANTOWN — Wins come in all kinds of shapes and sizes and when you are winning as often as West Virginia is, they seem to feed off each other.

On a cool, windblown Tuesday night in Huntington, facing in-state rival Marshall, whom the Mountaineers had defeated 7-0 earlier in the season, the Mountaineers gerrymandered its 11th straight victory in what is now a 31-4 season and did so out of little more than pride and guts.

They didn’t bother to get so much as a base hit in the deciding ninth-inning in which they scored the winning run. Never even hit the ball with a swing, but come tournament time, no one asks how they won, just whether they won.

It began with Chase Swain drawing a leadoff walk, and isn’t that always an omen of good things to come when you do it.

Next was Grant Hussey, a left-hander with the wind blowing to right field who just happens to be the school’s all-time leader in home runs, but Steve Sabins wasn’t looking for a run, just a win and he asked Hussey to sacrifice bunt — you do remember what that is, don’t you? — and he did it perfectly.

Next, Brodie Kresser struck out, but it was as productive a strikeout as you could ever ask for, the third strike being in the dirt, forcing the catcher to throw to first to retire him and as he did, Swain took off for third and made it safely.

Now 90 feet separated him from home plate and, with Gavin Kelly hitting, pitcher Tim Baird got lost in his own thoughts as picked just the wrong time to do so, for Swaim broke for the plate and stole home with a head-first slide with the go-ahead run.

But get this, by the time Baird realized what was happening, he didn’t even have time to make the throw to the plate, if you can imagine a steal of home without a throw.

It was just another magical moment in a magical season, one that saw WVU score two runs to tie in the seventh and then steal the final run. It’s how this year has been built under Sabins in his first season as coach.

“The school and the state take a lot of pride in having grit, having no excuses and showing up regardless of the situation,” Sabins had said in a Monday press conference explaining how this year was working out. “Battling through adversity is what the place is built on, whether it’s weather or public perception. Being able to do hard things is what the program is built on and we take a lot of pride in that.”

Not much in baseball harder than the way the Mountaineers pulled this one out.

“I don’t think there’s gurus or secret sauce,” Sabins went on “You show up every day, work really hard, try to get better and focus on your team. If you play well and work hard, you have a chance at it and things have lined up for us to be successful up to this point of the year.”

They weren’t really expected to author a season like this one, but now is No. 24 in the nation, a ranking that perhaps reflects the lack of respect rather than the reality of success.

This was a team that made the Super Regional last season but lost maybe the best player ever at the school in JJ Wetherholt to the St. Louis Cardinals with the 7lth pick of the major league draft and lost 75% of its innings pitched from last year.

It never fazed them.

“It has to be the makeup of the kinds not falling in love with themselves, not being satisfied and having a greater goal in mind,” Sabins said. “If you’re satisfied with winning series, being the road winning percentage leader, the Big 12 Pitcher of the Week or you actually care about what other people think in things like polls or players of the day, you get complacent.

“But there’s one goal in this thing and at this point it appears that this particular group of players has a larger goal in mind that they are trying to accomplish.”

They took another step toward it on Tuesday night.