WATCH: West Virginia Baseball Walks It Off, Advances to the Super Regionals, and Morgantown Belts Out Country Roads
How can you not be romantic about baseball?
West Virginia was down 3 runs with 3 outs left to save its season against Kentucky on Sunday in Morgantown, and the Mountaineers were able to spark some magic, scoring 5 runs in the top of the 9th to force a Game 7 on Monday.
So that brings us to Monday night, where it was a winner-take-all game with a Super Regional hosting bid on the line this upcoming weekend. West Virginia was in control of the game until the top of the 8th, when Kentucky was down 5-1 and tied it up with back-to-back BOMBS.
Game goes to the bottom of the 10th, and that is where chaos erupted as West Virginia advances to its 3rd straight Super Regional and hosts its first-ever Super Regional this weekend with a walk-off by Armani Guzman.
Look at how crazy the crowd is going, how crazy the team is celebrating, and how much it means to everyone. This team was down to its last 3 outs, with the chances of advancing looking slim to none. Now they are hosting Cal Poly with the CWS in reach for the first time ever.
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You could tell this town loves its baseball, and then came the ritual of singing "Country Roads" with the crowd, and holy shit does it give you goosebumps.
This is why postseason college baseball is one of the most underrated events to attend or even watch on TV. Each out seems like the last out, and the emotion you see from pitchers when they get out of a jam is just raw. Every year, there is at least one team in Omaha that you didn't expect to see there, and each unranked team thinks that could be them. This year, we saw all the upsets, which even included two 4-seeds making the Super Regionals (St. John's and Little Rock) and beating all odds.
For this West Virginia team, they expected to face the #1 overall seed, UCLA, but guess what? They got bounced, and that's what can happen in this tournament. Anybody can catch fire or get ice cold, and it happened to #1 UCLA and #2 Georgia Tech, as neither made it out of regionals. Now West Virginia faces a Cal Poly team at HOME, and its season is very much alive.
Baseball is the best because you never know what to expect. Anyone can win on any given day. I can't wait to be in Omaha next weekend. It is some of the most fun I have ever had, with incredible baseball going on.