West Virginia's Armani Guzman (5) in action against Marshall during an NCAA baseball game on Wednesday, April 30, 2025, in Charleston, W. Va. (AP Photo/Gregory Payan)

MORGANTOWN — Only a few hours had passed Sunday since the WVU baseball team had missed an opportunity to close out an outright Big 12 championship.

A 14-9 loss against Kansas State was still fresh on most minds. For that matter, maybe too were the ninth-inning debacles that came days earlier against the Wildcats and Pitt that resulted in two walk-off defeats when the Mountaineers appeared assured of victory.

Panic seemed like the next logical step.

“Actually, we bussed to Lawrence (Kan.) and got some barbecue,” WVU head coach Steve Sabins said. “One of the guys tipped off our waitress and told her it was my birthday, so everyone was sitting there eating barbecue and singing ‘Happy Birthday.’ ”

That’s not exactly panic, and the 17th-ranked Mountaineers (40-10, 19-6 Big 12) may not exactly be your normal collection of college athletes.

“No, they’re unique in that they’re so resilient,” Sabins said. “They could have sat at that table and started pointing fingers, but they didn’t.

“You knock them down, they get right back up. Their strength is the belief they have in each other and that they are doing it the right way.”

Make no mistake, this is a critical juncture for the Mountaineers. They’ve lost five of their last eight games at a time when other top 25 schools are locking up postseason seeding and positioning.

Instead of joining that group, WVU has lost to hated underdogs like Pitt and Marshall.

A win on Sunday would have wrapped up the Big 12 title for the Mountaineers, but they instead gave up seven runs in the eighth inning to lose it.

Sabins uses the word “painful” to describe it.

“Especially when you consider how we lost some of those games and who we lost them to,” he said.

He points out there is another side to the story. Maybe it’s difficult to see, and it’s quite possible most of us aren’t equipped to view it at all.

“It’s painful, because these kids all season long have put themselves in a position to win every game,” he said. “It’s painful, because the guys have put themselves in an elevated situation that, quite honestly, we’ve never been in before. When you reach that level, the losses are going to hurt so much more. They’re supposed to hurt more.”

It is in a weird twist of perspective where one can begin to understand why there is no panic from Sabins in this situation.

WVU has dipped a toe into the elite college baseball world before, only to come up short. Yet the program has continued to build and get better in the seasons that followed.

“We went down a list and every time there was something painful. We hosted a regional in 2019 and got walked-off on a grand slam,” Sabins said. “We got swept by North Carolina last year in our first super regional. We won a Big 12 title in 2023, but it was a three-way tie. We could have won it outright, but got swept by Texas on the final weekend.

“It’s the painful moments where your program grows stronger. Ten years ago, no one really cared that much about WVU baseball. Now, there are expectations. It’s our job to continue to find a way to surpass them, but as long as you have expectations, there will always be certain levels of pain.”

WVU now enters the final three-game series against Kansas (39-14, 17-10) on Thursday, at Kendrick Family Ballpark, needing one win or one loss by Arizona State — the Sun Devils travel to Oklahoma State — to win the program’s second Big 12 championship.

The idea, at least what WVU hopes to avoid, is another painful weekend.

“In this gig, there is always work to do,” Sabins said. “The next chapter is out there waiting for us. This is what the players have built for over the course of the entire season. They’ve heightened expectations and now they get the opportunity to go out and meet them.”