A weird thing happened to the baseball team this weekend. WVU entered the series against St. John’s with first place on the line. The Mountaineers won two of three — and outscored the Red Storm 30-15 — but today find themselves in a tie for first.

That’ll happen. We continue to marvel about the way these guys rake it, but consider 10 of the 15 weekend runs allowed came on one dayand Saturday’s 16-2 blowout turned on the mound.

Gross came out in the first inning and had little command of his breaking ball. St. John’s loaded the bases with one out and was looking at breaking the game open with a big inning.

The series had been marked by the winning team rushing off to an early lead, WVU doing it with three runs in the first inning of the opener that it won and St. John’s scoring four in the first inning of its second-game victory.

Baseball is a game of big innings,” Van Zant noted. “Winning teams score more runs in one inning than their opponent gets in the whole game in more games than not.”

“Coach stresses minimizing the damage,” Gross said.

And that is just what he did, allowing only one run out of that mess on a sacrifice fly.

USF has won seven in a row in Big East play, but has done so with three-game sweeps of 12th-place (last) Georgetown and ninth place Pitt after winning the last game of a three game set against sixth-place UConn. WVU sweept UConn — as well as Georgetown — and took two of three against 10th-place Villanova and fourth-place St. John’s. WVU visits USF April 24-26.