Riggio Saves Oklahoma State from Elimination with Late RBI vs. West Virginia
ARLINGTON, Texas – Oklahoma State staved off elimination at the Big 12 Baseball Championship Thursday as the second-seeded Cowboys topped third-seeded West Virginia, 3-2, at Globe Life Field. With the win, the 12th-ranked Cowboys improved to 38-17 and advance to face either Texas Tech or Oklahoma Friday at 6:30 p.m. The No. 14 Mountaineers dropped to 39-18.
OSU's win also marked a milestone for 11th-year head coach Josh Holliday as it was the 400th victory of his career.
The duo of Nolan McLean and Juaron Watts-Brown led the way for OSU with strong showings on the mound.
McLean made his second career start and allowed just two runs on four hits while striking out four in six innings of work, which marked a career long.
Watts-Brown came out of the bullpen for the first time this season to open the seventh and tossed three shutout innings to earn the win and improve to 6-4. The righty allowed just two hits and racked up seven strikeouts.
Roc Riggio was the hero offensively as he smacked a go-ahead single in the bottom of the eighth inning off WVU All-Big 12 closer Carlson Reed.
The Cowboys jumped out to an early lead in the first. After the first three batters reached safely to load the bases, Chase Adkison delivered a sacrifice fly to right field to bring home a run. Up next, Nolan Schubart collected an RBI on a groundout as Riggio scampered home and slid in just ahead of the tag to put the Pokes up 2-0.
The Mountaineers answered with a run in the second. Landon Wallace led off the inning with a double, and two groundouts brought him home to cut the OSU lead to one.
The score remained 2-1 until the sixth when WVU loaded the bases with one out and scored the tying run on a groundout to first.
With the game knotted at 2-2 through 7 ½ innings, David Mendham led off the home half of the eighth with an infield single and moved to second on a sac bunt by Marcus Brown. Following a walk to Zach Ehrhard, Riggio stepped to the plate and smoked a pitch to right field to give OSU a 3-2 advantage.
WVU made things interesting in the ninth. After Watts-Brown struck out the first two batters, a hit by pitch, double and another hit by pitch loaded the bases. But Watts-Brown came up big, striking out Wallace to end the game.