The No. 4 TCU baseball team will try to get back on track this weekend against West Virginia in Morgantown, West Virginia.
TCU (34-9, 10-5 in Big 12) lost to No. 15 Dallas Baptist, 6-4, in Dallas on Wednesday night. That loss ended the Frogs win streak at eight games, a stretch that included series sweeps against Santa Clara and Texas.
West Virginia (24-19, 6-9 in Big 12) is coming off of a tough stretch with seven losses in their last 10 games. They have lost two straight series to Big 12 rivals Oklahoma and Kansas. They also lost at Marshall on Tuesday night, 3-2, and then at Radford on Wednesday night, 9-4.
TCU is 6-2 against West Virginia since joining the Big 12. The Frogs won the season series 2-1 during the 2012-13 season, but lost to the Mountaineers in the Big 12 Conference Tournament.
The Frogs got revenge the next season by sweeping them during the regular season and also beating them in the Big 12 Conference Tournament on their way to their first Big 12 Championship.
TCU senior center fielder Cody Jones has been on a tear all year. He leads the team in runs, hits, walks, total bases and slugging percentage and is tied in home runs with freshman catcher Evan Skoug with three.
The only player on the team that is arguably having a better season than Cody Jones is freshman outfielder Connor Wanhanen. He has cemented himself in the lineup as the designated hitter, batting .389 with 51 hits and 26 RBI on the season.
One Horned Frog who has been on a decline as of late is senior third baseman Derek Odell. He is batting .273 and has 19 runs and 41 hits, both of which are the second worst among the regular starters. He also has a team worst 10 errors in the field.
West Virginia freshman utility player Kyle Davis has been one of the Mountaineers best players all year, leading the team in at-bats, runs, hits and doubles. He also has the best average among regular starters, batting .352 on the year.
The projected starters for TCU this weekend are senior righty Preston Morrison (9-1), who leads the team in innings pitched with 72, sophomore lefty Tyler Alexander (3-2), who recently got moved back into the weekend rotation, and junior lefty Alex Young (8-2), who leads the team in strikeouts with 60 and has a 1.65 ERA, which is the highest among starters.
For West Virginia, the projected starters have not been named yet but the three who have had the most starts are sophomore righty Chad Donato, redshirt-junior lefty Ross Vance and freshman righty BJ Myers.
First pitches for the weekend series are scheduled for 5 p.m. on Friday, 3 p.m. on Saturday and 12 p.m. on Sunday. You can hear them all live from Morgantown, W.Va. on KTCU 88.7 FM.
