MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – The 16th-ranked UCF baseball team couldn’t hold on down the stretch, as West Virginia managed to claim the opener, 7-6, on a cold and wet late Friday night at Wagener Field at Kendrick Family Ballpark.
With the Black and Gold holding to a 6-4 lead in the seventh inning, WVU rallied for a trio of runs in the last of the seventh to earn the come-from-behind victory. The first-place Mountaineers improve to 20-13 overall and 9-4 in Big 12 Conference play with the win, while the Knights fall to 21-10 and 8-8 in league play with the setback.
With WVU holding to an early 2-0 advantage, UCF loaded the bases in the top of the fourth and Andrew Williamson delivered a two-out, two-run single to deadlock the score at 2-2. Jack Zyska walked, Danny Neri singled, and AJ Nessler reached via a base on balls with one away to load things up. Following an out, the freshman Williamson dropped in a two-run single to right to bring in both Zyska and Neri and tie things up.
The Knights again rallied in the fifth with three more runs to take a 5-2 lead. The Black and Gold recorded five consecutive hits in the frame to take the three-run advantage. Braden Calise started things off with a one-out single and Lex Boedicker followed with a ground-rule double to left to put runners on second and third. Zyska then drove in the first run of the frame with a hard-hit single up the middle and Neri followed with a picture-perfect safety squeeze bunt down the first-base line to make it 4-2. Nessler capped the scoring with an RBI single up the middle to extend the advantage to 5-2. The Knights looked for more by again loading the bases, but WVU reliever Carson Estridge came on and managed to limit the damage by retiring the next two batters he faced.
The Mountaineers countered back with a wind-aided two-run home run off the bat of Kyle West that just got out down the leftfield line in the bottom of the fifth to make it a 5-4 contest.
Following a scoreless sixth, the Black and Gold extended their lead to 6-4 in the seventh thanks to a clutch two-out RBI single off the bat of the freshman Williamson. With Nessler on third with two outs in the inning, Williamson plated his third run of the game with an RBI single to right.
West Virginia then got back-to-back men aboard to start the bottom of seventh via walks and West drove them both home with a two-run triple that got over the head of Williamson in center to tie the game. With two outs and a runner on third, Brodie Kresser reached on a UCF defensive miscue that West came in to score on to give the Mountaineers the late lead.
The Black and Gold got a two-out single from Boedicker in the eighth, but that’s all the late offense the Knights could muster as David Hagaman pitched well down the stretch for WVU.
West Virginia reliever Estridge earned the win in relief to move to 1-1 on the year while UCF’s Kyle Kramer was tagged with the loss by surrendering an unearned run in the seventh to drop to 5-2. Hagaman pitched the final two innings to earn his second save.
Williamson led UCF offensively in the game by going 2-for-4 with three runs batted in, while Boedicker had a three-hit night by going 3-for-5 with a double and a run scored. West paced WVU by going 3-for-4 with four runs batted in and three runs scored.
Friday’s contest started in a 90-minute rain delay, as the ballgame didn’t begin until after 8 p.m.
The Knights will look to bounce back in game two on Saturday at 4 p.m. The third and final game will then come on Sunday at 1 p.m. Following the series, UCF will return to the Sunshine State to open a nine-game homestand against North Florida on Tuesday.