(UPDATE as of 3/4/26, 1:45 p.m. — Wednesday’s WVU-Marshall baseball game was canceled some 3 hours prior to the scheduled first pitch.)
Schedule changes aren’t uncommon in college baseball.
West Virginia has dealt with an abundance of them early into the 2026 season, the latest of which has the Mountaineers set to play at 5 p.m. Wednesday against Marshall at Jack Cook Field.
WVU (8-2) had originally been slated to host Radford for two games Tuesday and Wednesday in Morgantown. Those contests were canceled after Highlanders’ freshman pitcher Joey Raccuia died last week in a car crash. Raccuia was the son of former Radford baseball coach Joe Raccuia.
“A tough spot that they’re in and they had a funeral service that they were going to attend as a team [Monday night] and they just didn’t think it was in their best interest to get on a bus, rush home and try to get to Morgantown,” WVU head coach Steve Sabins said as a guest on Statwide Sportsline. “There was some weather involved. We learned about that [Monday] afternoon and went full steam ahead.”
Full steam ahead meant exhausting all options searching for a replacement as a midweek opponent.
“It’s no longer a rolodex. It’s the Google Drive sheet with hours from Morgantown, and it’s basically characterized from 45 minutes to 5 hours,” Sabins said. “You go right down that list contacting everybody. We’ve worked with most of these coaches at some point for scheduling, fall games or something in the past. It’s never really how you want to spend your day, but playing is the most important thing, and so that kind of becomes priority. No. 1.”
Sabins mentioned Dayton, Akron, Ohio, UMBC and Binghamton as potential opponents the Mountaineers checked into playing as it didn’t initially appear Wednesday’s contest would come about with Marshall, which won 13-4 at Virginia Tech on Tuesday.
But after initial talks, Thundering Herd head coach Greg Beals got back in touch with Sabins and indicated the state’s two Division I programs could meet under one condition.
“He came back a few hours later and said, ‘administration said we’ll take you, but the only catch is you have to come to Huntington.’ I said, ‘no doubt.’ We just want to play baseball and want our team to stay in rhythm and get better, and be in a good environment with passionate fans, so it ended up working out well for us,” Sabins said.
Thus, WVU and Marshall are now set to meet four times this season, with the later matchups set for March 24 in Huntington, April 7 in Morgantown and May 5 in Charleston.
The Mountaineers (8-2) have won each of their three series thus far, though they missed out on a second sweep last weekend after squandering a 6-0 lead Sunday in a 7-6 loss at Kennesaw State.
“If you win that last one, you feel like you had a successful weekend and a little bit less when you lose the last one, because you keep that taste in your mouth,” Sabins said. “From a competitive and development standpoint, at this point in the year, it’s not necessarily bad. Often times, you’ll have better practices leading up to the next game.
“Some of it is has to do with this time of the year, in non-conference play, you’re really working to figure out your team. Opportunities are critical and guys getting opportunities to have success, experience failure and getting thrown in the fire is part of this journey whether we like it or not. I don’t think you ever hold your head. Winning a series on the road is a difficult thing to do. Don’t ever take wins for granted. We talk to our team about that. But we had a chance to win that game, sweep that series and it’s always the goal. That one slipped away from us. We’ll learn from it and hopefully bounce back on Wednesday.”
WVU got outstanding starting pitching for the entirety of its series against the Owls. Dawson Montesa, Chansen Cole and Maxx Yehl combined for 17 innings pitched and one run allowed on 10 hits over the three games. Montesa allowed the only run, but also went seven innings, while Cole and Yehl logged five scoreless each.
“Something that really stands out that I don’t know if we had done for the last several years was we started the same three pitchers three consecutive weekends on Friday, Saturday and Sunday,” Sabins said. “Last weekend, all three of those guys had quality starts. The name of the game is quality starting pitching. That’s what everybody recruits and that’s what you need to win. Over the course of the season, those are the teams that get to keep playing versus the ones that don’t.”
Ian Korn is WVU’s projected starter against Marshall, which has won three of four since a five-game skid.
The Herd (5-6) took two of three last weekend in a pitching-dominated home-opening series against Butler, before exploding for 13 runs against the Hokies in Blacksburg.
Both teams have three-game home series scheduled over the weekend. The Mountaineers host Columbia and Marshall will welcome St. Bonaventure.