Well, the story of the Big 12 baseball season so far has been the West Virginia

Mountaineers. My goodness, they are in first place as we have this conversation.

And we welcome on one of the big reasons why. Blaine Traxel joining us on Heartlandcollecoresports.com.

I'm Pete Mundo. It is always good to be here with you.

So, Blaine, let's just start off with this team.

And, you know, you come to this team.

You're at Cal State, Northridge.

You come to West Virginia.

And how about just how this season has gone for you in this team

and how much has exceeded your expectations there in Morgantown?

Yeah, I mean, you saw it coming in, everybody that they were getting, and everybody that was here, all the pieces were kind of lining up. The puzzle was looking good. It was really about this team just clicking all at the same time. We got a lot of good players. The hitters are some of the best hitters in the country, and then the pitching staff goes really deep one of the best pitching staffs probably in

the country um then we have a lot of veteran guys that the younger guys look up to so it's just a

great great puzzle that's going together and all the pieces just work perfect with it you know i

think about where we're at blaine right now in the game of baseball and you know you think about

how often it seems like you know know, guys last five innings.

We even see it obviously up to the major leagues where starters just do not go as long as you have gone.

I mean, you look at what happened in your first six starts.

You through four complete games, which at the time led the country.

What do you attribute your length in games to?

What is that all about? And what do you bring that back to?

Honestly, back to my freshman year of college, my first coach was Greg Moore. He told me

that if you ever want the ball, you got to want to fight for it and prove to the

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