They don't know each other's favorite colors or breakfast cereals yet, but after playing seven times so far this year, the University of Charleston and West Virginia Wesleyan softball teams know a whole lot about each other.
The two teams play for an eighth, ninth and possibly 10th time starting Wednesday, when Wesleyan hosts UC in the NCAA Division II Atlantic Super Regionals. The winner of this best-of-three matchup earns a spot in the College World Series, to be held May 17-21 in Denver.
Game 1 begins at noon Wednesday, with Game 2 beginning at noon Thursday. If the two teams are even after those two games, they'll play a third after Thursday's noon contest.
"There are no surprises," UC coach Ray Loeser said. "You're playing somebody where you know what they have, they know what you have. It's just a matter of who goes out and performs the best over those seven innings."
UC holds a 5-2 lead in the seven games it has faced Wesleyan this season, but the Bobcats' two wins were huge ones. The Golden Eagles (48-9) swept the four regular-season games and won their first matchup in the Mountain East Conference tournament. The Bobcats (53-9) took two straight from UC in the MEC tournament's championship round to win the title.
Both teams know the other is among the best in the country all over the field. Both can hit - WVWC is 12th nationally batting .337 and UC is 39th batting .317 - and both can pitch - Wesleyan is third nationally with a 1.20 earned run average and UC is eighth with a 1.47 ERA.
"Wesleyan's a good team," UC senior Allison Evans said. "And when you play someone seven times, it's going to go back and forth. You learn from your mistakes and you build off that."
The biggest lesson Charleston learned from those two losses to Wesleyan is to bring baserunners home. When UC fell to Wesleyan 4-0 and 5-3 in the MEC championship round, the Golden Eagles left four runners on base in the first game and stranded 13 in the second.
"Getting people on and hitting them in, I think that was probably our biggest downfall when we played them in the MECs," UC junior Alyssa Stanley said. "We were getting people on base. We weren't hitting them in. [The Bobcats] got the hits when they needed to."
Even though UC and Wesleyan have so much experience facing each other this season, Loeser said his team will still look for ways to spring something new on the Bobcats and keep them off balance. And even though WVWC has faced both Alli Burdette and Jessie Rowe in the pitcher's circle this year, the combination of the two could be just the disturbance the Golden Eagles need.
Burdette and Rowe's distinct pitching styles - Burdette's pitches move up in the strike zone and Rowe's move down - make it tough for opposing batters to get comfortable. That was on full display in the marathon first-round game UC played in the Atlantic Regional against Lock Haven.
The two teams went 13 innings and faced so many rain delays that the game needed to be continued the next morning. Rowe pitched 3 1/3 of the 13 innings, and Loeser said they were among the most important innings pitched for UC. It allowed Burdette to rest and be ready for the second game of the day, and it forced Lock Haven to adjust to a polar-opposite style.
UC hopes that will work again against West Virginia Wesleyan.
"I still think it will make a difference," Rowe said. "Even though they've seen us several times, we can still go in and it will still change the pace of the game."
It's a familiar foe for Charleston, but UC will face that foe at a level it has never before reached. This is the Golden Eagles' inaugural Super Regional appearance, and now they're two wins away from a World Series berth. Loeser said the energy that propelled his team through the regional round hasn't faded yet.
"I look at a bunch of kids that want to keep playing," he said. "They don't want to lose their last game."