MORGANTOWN - The college baseball season is over at West Virginia University. Has been for 11 days.
That doesn't mean Randy Mazey is over the ending or that he doesn't feel like the NCAA's selection committee overlooked his Mountaineers.
"I think exactly what I thought at the time," the WVU coach said. "Obviously, finishing in fourth place in the Big 12 means a lot more than people thought it did, because the three teams that got in ahead of us all won their regionals. The Big 12's record is 9-1 [in NCAA regionals]. From the committee's standpoint, I guess the Big 12 is a little underrated, which just proves that I think we deserved to get in."
The Mountaineers, who haven't been to the postseason since 1996, were about as close as possible this year, earning the distinction as one of the top three teams that didn't earn an invitation. That bothered Mazey then, as it does now, not merely because his team was three outs away from an automatic invitation, but because a young roster ripped off 17 wins in 21 games and cut its RPI from No. 119 to No. 60 as everyone and everything came together.
So it was no wonder when the selection show came and went without sending WVU an itinerary that Mazey went to Twitter and keyed in just his seventh message of the season. "Wait til next year, that committee has our whole team fired up now! Our mission has begun!"
Hey, why not? A team that was 36-22 overall and won 15 of 27 Big 12 games, counting the conference tournament, had relied almost entirely upon freshmen, sophomores and juniors and counted just a starting pitcher, a reliever, a closer and an outfielder from the senior class.
All that optimism, all that momentum is now in jeopardy. The Major League Baseball First-Year Player Draft begins Thursday, and these next three days and 40 rounds will sharply shape WVU's 2017 season.
"When you talk about college baseball at this level, the draft completely dictates your success," Mazey said. "We feel like we have a tremendous team coming back next year and a tremendous incoming class, and we could feel that way up until the first day of the draft, but then on Friday, we could get completely decimated. Our livelihood, our success revolves around what's getting ready to happen over a three-day period."
The good news for Mazey and the Mountaineers is that WVU baseball is once again reputable. The bad news is the reputation comes with a cost, and good players can go pro early, like Devin Williams on the basketball court and Wendell Smallwood on the football field.
In addition to the four seniors, Mazey has six more draft-eligible players, each from the junior class. Included are No. 1 starter Chad Donato, who was first-team All-Big 12 and led the conference in strikeouts, first baseman Jackson Cramer, who raised his average 89 points in the final 21 games and finished at .300 with nine home runs and a team-high 45 RBIs, and Ray Guerrini, the catcher who was probably the team's most valuable player, caught the final 21 games of the season and managed both a .289 average and a rotating cast of pitchers.
But there's also Shaun Wood, a 6-foot-6 lefty who Mazey used for extra-base hits off the bench, and Jackson Sigman, a rubber-armed reliever whose sidearm style was as reliable for Mazey as it was confounding for opponents.
"You never know," Mazey said. "Sometimes a scout out there watches one kid have a great day, and it's the only time he sees him all year, and you lose a kid because he had a good day. Sometimes a scout sees something in a kid, and that team takes him in the 38th round."
The nerves run deeper for Mazey this year, though. Unlike basketball and football, baseball programs lose recruits to the draft, and though the players have a choice to decline the pick and go to college, there's also a pressure attached to that decision. A player who chooses college over the pros can't be picked until after his third year on campus.
WVU's incoming recruiting class is very good. It's the best Mazey has had since coming to WVU in 2013. PerfectGame.org ranked the group No. 44 nationally, up from Nos. 51, 52 and 69 in Mazey's first three years.
"This group is different from last year's group because last year's group had a lot of great baseball players," Mazey said. "Darius Hill, Ivan Vera, Kyle Gray, they weren't prospects on the professional scale. They were just really good baseball players. We weren't worried about the draft with those guys. This year's class, we've got some draft issues as to whether we're going to get these guys or not."
It's a group good enough to keep Mazey's program moving forward. It's also a group good enough to lose some players to the pros over the next few days, though Mazey, it seemed, hinted that some of his recruits made it clear to pro teams they were not interested in skipping college.
The top concern is Alek Manoah, a 6-6, 245-pound first baseman/pitcher from Miami. On signing day in November, Mazey said Manoah "has the chance to be one of the best players to ever play at West Virginia as both a pitcher and a hitter."
Kevin Brophy is a 6-3 infielder with a smooth left-handed swing. Jordan Scott is a switch-hitting outfielder who has speed, power and defense, as well as athleticism in his blood. His father played football at Alabama and his uncle played in the NFL. Isaiah Kearns is a 6-1 pitcher and third baseman who's considered one of the best pro or college prospects in Pennsylvania.
They could all be picked, and there are others who might have had one good day or one good trait that a scout happened to see.
"Since we don't get to play anymore, as coaches, this is the competitive side of it that we love," Mazey said. "We've got four or five guys on our current team that we're talking with and four or five guys coming in who we feel like have a chance. That's a big difference. That's maybe 10 more guys on your team who are really good players or 10 more guys not on your team."