West Virginia Captures a Program Record 41 Wins

Originally posted on West Virginia Mountaineers on SI
By Christopher Hall | Last updated May 23, 2025 4:41 PM ET

The West Virginia University baseball team set another program record Thursday afternoon after knocking off Cincinnati in the quarterfinals of the Big 12 Championship for the 41st win of the season.

“It means a lot because I’ve been here for 10 years,” WVU head coach Steve Sabins said. Later adding, “We had a lot of people work for a straight decade to be in this position.”

The Mountaineers set the regular season record with 40 wins, which the program reached the 40-win mark two years ago during the postseason in the NCAA regional in Lexington, KY, and in 1994 in the Atlantic regional.

Head coach Steve Sabins arrived in Morgantown in 2016 to serve as an assistant under Randy Mazey and the program has been on the rise since.

West Virginia had not been to an NCAAA regional since 1996 and just in Sabins second year in Morgantown, the Mountaineers were back in the postseason, reaching the NCAA tournament in 2017 and hosted its first regional in 54 years in 2019.

The Mountaineers returned and reloaded in 2020 and were off to another solid start before the Coronavirus pandemic canceled the season and WVU was snubbed in 2022 before returning to a regional in 2023 and is well on its way to a third consecutive NCAA tournament for the first time in 62 years, when the program made four straight trips from 1961-64.

“This wasn’t the standard, this wasn’t the expectation for about 10 years,” Sabins said.

“When I first got here in 2016, we hadn’t been to a regional in 20 years. So, to go from not making a regional in 20 years, to making three regionals in a row and having first rounders and playing in Super’s and setting program records that’s an exciting thing and its something that a lot of people have worked really hard for a long time. So, the fans the players, the alumni, coach (Randy) Mazey, our staff, these guys have been at it for so long, outworking so many individuals to make this happen.”

West Virginia has been on the recruiting trail searching for prospects that fit the culture of the program, a blue-collar athlete with a chip on their shoulder ready to prove they belong at the highest level of college baseball.

“You have to recruit really tough kids, you have to develop, you have to get them better, you have to set a standard that nobody wavers on. So, over a decade, that’s why we’re here,” Sabins said.

West Virginia meets Arizona in the semifinals of the Big 12 Baseball Championship Friday evening at 5:00 p.m. EST with the action streaming on ESPN+.