Pitt enters important series with West Virginia

Pitt’s home against conference rival West Virginia this weekend will play a vital role in… Pitt’s home game against conference rival West Virginia this weekend will play a vital role in deciding the end of the season for both teams.

Pitt and WVU are battling for position in the Big East conference standings. West Virginia is currently third in the conference with a 13-8 Big East record. Pitt follows at 12-9.

Connecticut leads the Big East at 18-3. St. John’s sits in second place with a 13-7 conference record.

“It’s a huge series,” junior starting pitcher Matt Iannazzo said. “We need to improve upon every aspect of our game if we want to win.”

Iannazzo will start Friday’s contest against the 27-19 West Virginia Mountaineers.

One of the Panthers’ greatest strengths heading into the three-game series with West Virginia is their offense. Pitt (28-18-) currently has nine players who are batting more than .300 this season and leads the 12-team conference with a .312 batting average.

Pitt head coach Joe Jordano credited assistant coach Danny Lopaze and volunteer coach Kyle Cheesebrough with the offensive success.

“When we execute our game plan we are as good as anyone,” Jordano said in an e-mail. “However, we have drifted at times from our approach and have struggled. At this stage of the season, we need to execute all phases of the game.”

The series looks like it will be an offensive battle, as the Mountaineers are third in the conference with a .304 team batting average. Both teams sit near the top in the Big East in nearly every offensive category, but drop some of their dominance defensively.

West Virginia is second to last in the Big East in team ERA at 4.92. Pitt is sixth at 4.08. The Mountaineers have given up 252 runs this season, tenth in the Big East, while Pitt has allowed 217 — tied for sixth.

Despite sitting near the top of the Big East, the Panthers have recently hit a small in-conference slump.

Over the past few weeks, they lost two of three to Cincinnati and were swept in a three-game series by St. John’s. Those losses were sandwiched around nonconference routs of Akron and Cleveland State.

“It has been a tough couple of weeks in conference — we have lost three of five games by a run and the other by two runs,” Jordano said.  “But in this conference, that is the name of the game. We have played pretty consistently throughout the year and we played well this weekend — we just came up on the short end.”

Pitt lost by scores of 9-7 and 9-8 to Cincinnati and final tallies of 2-1 and 8-7 in 10 innings to St. John’s.

The Panthers defeated Cincinnati in the opening game of the series 9-8 using a Kevan Smith three-run homer in the eighth inning to come back from a two-run deficit. Smith — who was named Big East Player of the Week on April 11 — also had an RBI single in the first inning.

“It’s a great honor. There are a lot of great players in the conference,” Smith said. “It kind of caught me by surprise and I was honored, but I couldn’t have done it without the team.”

In the 2-1 loss to St. John’s, Iannazzo threw a complete game two-hitter, but registered the loss because the Panthers gave up an unearned run in the seventh inning, just a half-inning after third baseman Phil Konieczny’s RBI single gave Pitt the lead.

“I was mixing pitches really well and throwing strikes,” Iannazzo said. “I didn’t have any walks and I was keeping them off balance by consistently throwing strikes.”

Iannazzo now has three of the team’s four complete games this season.

“I want to finish what I start,” Iannazzo said. “I really want to go deep into games because that means I’m giving my team a good chance of winning — it means I’m pitching really well and giving my team the best chance to win.”

Smith said that as the team moves on to face West Virginia, it’s important for the Panthers to put the series against St. John’s behind them.

“It was a rough one, but WVU is our biggest rival and it’s a huge conference series,” Smith said. “We need to just come out firing on all cylinders, don’t take them lightly and focus on the little things. We need to treat every game like the Big East Championship.”

Following the series with WVU, the team will play a nonconference game at Youngstown State before traveling to South Florida for the final series of the season from May 19-21.

The champions of each conference are awarded automatic bids, while the remainder of the 64-team field is selected by a committee. Not wanting to leave anything to chance, Jordano knows how his team must finish the season.

“We need to win the conference. Period.”