WVU Baseball’s Season Ended Bitterly — But Omaha Feels Closer Than Ever
The final out landed softly in the catcher’s mitt, and just like that, West Virginia University’s 2025 baseball season ended not with triumph, but with an ache that echoed through the dugout. The Mountaineers stood frozen in disbelief on the sun-soaked diamond of the NCAA Super Regionals in Raleigh, having fallen 6-5 to NC State in a game that swung wildly, cruelly, like the Appalachian winds they know too well. The dream of Omaha vanished, but something else lingered — something deeper than disappointment.
For the first time in program history, WVU had clawed its way to back-to-back Super Regional appearances. Led by head coach Randy Mazey in his final season before retirement, the team posted a 43-19 record — the second-highest win total in school history. It was a team defined by grit and speed, by the crack of J.J. Wetherholt’s bat and the flash of Logan Sauve’s glove. Every pitch thrown by ace Derek Clark carried the weight of a season built on belief, on the idea that West Virginia could — and should — belong among college baseball’s elite.
The loss stung because the Mountaineers had the game in hand. Up 5-3 in the eighth inning, with Clark nearing 100 pitches, Mazey handed the ball to sophomore reliever Nate Gbur. A bloop single, a wild pitch, and a fastball left too high changed everything. A three-run homer by NC State’s Gavin Nixon broke hearts and shifted destinies. WVU never recovered.
Yet, amid the heartbreak, something has changed — not just in the program, but in the culture surrounding it. Monongalia County Ballpark routinely drew sellout crowds this season, a sign that Morgantown is falling in love with baseball. Recruits from as far as California and Texas are choosing WVU over established SEC powers, drawn by a program built on resilience and purpose. Mazey’s successor, assistant coach Steve Sabins, is already known as a player’s coach, a tireless recruiter, and a tactical mind shaped by WVU’s evolution from regional underdog to national threat.
Wetherholt, a projected first-round MLB draft pick, called the loss “the hardest moment of my career,” but he added something more telling in the postgame presser: “This isn’t the end of something. This is the start of a new standard.”
Indeed, Omaha — long a distant dream for Mountaineer fans — now feels like a matter of when, not if. The bitter end to 2025 may be the seed of something greater. The heartbreak in Raleigh might just be the beginning of a tradition, of a belief that this little mountain town in West Virginia can one day echo with the sounds of college baseball’s biggest stage.
They came close. Painfully close. And in sports, close can break you — or it can build you. For WVU, all signs point toward the latter.
