By: Shanna Rose
MORGANTOWN, W.Va.- After dropping the first game of a doubleheader, the West Virginia baseball team defeated Texas Tech 3-2 in the second game on Saturday afternoon at the Kendrick Family Ballpark.
Reese Bassinger replaced Gavin Van Kempen, who left in the third with an apparent injury. Bassinger (6-0) gave up eight hits and only two runs while striking out four.
White led the Mountaineers () with two hits, a pair of doubles, and two RBI.
Tracer Lopez went 3-for-4 with one RBI for the Red Raiders ().
Sam White doubled in the first inning to give WVU a 1-0 lead.
Texas Tech tied it in the top of the third on Lopez’s solo home run.
Benjamin Lumsden led off the third with a walk and moved up 90 feet on Kyle West’s ground ball. White then doubled to right field, scoring Lumsden and giving the Mountaineers a 2-1 lead. Jace Rinehart’s base hit made it a 3-1 game.
In the fourth, the Red Raiders cut the deficit to 3-2. Bassinger gave up a leadoff single before getting the next batter to foul out. Antonelli Savattere singled through the right side. Peyton Schulze followed with an RBI single but Bassinger got the final two outs to end the inning.
WVU had a chance to add to their lead in the fourth but failed to do so. After Brodie Kresser and Gavin Kelly reached to put runners on first and second. Next, Kresser was thrown out at third on a double steal. On Spencer Barnett’s base hit to right field, Kelly was thrown out at home.
Bassinger cruised through the final four innings to secure the victory.
The Mountaineers had just three hits in the first six innings before a rain delay paused the game for nearly an hour in the 6-4 loss to the Red Raiders in the first game.
Griffin Kirn got the nod for WVU but Texas Tech got to him early, jumping out to a 2-0 lead because of an error, and the second came off a balk with runners on first and third.
Grant Hussey pulled the Mountaineers within one in the third when he blasted a solo home run over the left field fence.
The Red Raiders added a run in the sixth and three more in the seventh to push the lead to 6-1.
In the bottom of the seventh, Lumsden drove in a run before Skylar King hit a two-run home run to cut the deficit to 6-4.
WVU loaded the bases in the ninth, but Texas Tech reliever Lukas Pirlo got West to fly out.
The Mountaineers and Texas Tech meet in the rubber match on Sunday at 1 p.m. (ET).
Photo Credit: Shanna Rose
