You’ll note the silence at the beginning there. West Virginia baseball manager Randy Mazey was on the cusp of tears Monday when the Mountaineers made program history after setting out to make program history. His eyes welled up again later when Mazey was talking about all the team had to overcome this season, said he doesn’t “do much around here” and instead credited his staff of assistant coaches and staff members.

College baseball may or may not mean a lot to you. That, as you now know, is not the consensus.

The Mountaineers will bus to North Carolina tomorrow, practice Thursday and play their first NCAA postseason game since 1996 at 2 p.m. Friday when the No. 2 seed in the Winston-Salem regional plays No. 3 seed Maryland. In the end, WVU was safely in the tournament. The RPI and the strength of schedule were enough. I don’t know or even think baseball’s bracket is structured like basketball’s bracket, and it seems geography does a good amount of work for the selection committee, so take this as far as you’re willing to take it:

The winner of the Wake Forest-WVU-Maryland-UMBC group advances to play the winner of the Florida-USF-Bethune-Cookman-Maris group. Florida and Wake Forest are among the 16 regional hosts and national seeds. Florida is No. 3, and though the NCAA only puts numbers next to the top eight, that would kinda sorta make Wake Forest No. 14. So if there are 16 regionals and a top seed in each, Wake Forest is the … third-worst … No. 1. If you subscribe to inverse matchups, WVU is then among the top No. 2 seeds.

This is not to say the day was without drama. The selection show unveiled the regionals one at a time. WVU was revealed in the penultimate region.

 That wasn’t comforting for a team that won 17 of its final 21 games last season and was one of the top four teams left out of the field, but it was nevertheless fitting for a team that won six games in its last at-bat and lost six games in the opposition’s last at-bat this season.

“You’re sitting there thinking you’ve really done everything you can do, and you have to just sit there and trust you’ve done enough,” said relief pitcher Jackson Sigman, one of only two seniors on the roster. “I think it’s very fitting for Mountaineers everywhere to be on edge and not know what’s going to happen. But getting through and having your name pop up on the board was the best feeling I’ve ever had.”