Another successful weekend for the West Virginia Mountaineers results in another slight bump up in the top 25 rankings. WVU took two of three from Kennesaw State on the road, allowing them to slide up to No. 23 in D1Baseball’s new batch of rankings.

D1Baseball’s Top 25 for Week 3

1. UCLA
2. LSU
3. Texas
4. Mississippi State
5. Georgia Tech
6. Arkansas
7. Auburn
8. North Carolina
9. Florida
10. Southern Miss
11. Georgia
12. Oklahoma
13. NC State
14. Clemson
15. Wake Forest
16. Coastal Carolina
17. TCU
18. Oregon State
19. Tennessee
20. Florida State
21. Kentucky
22. Texas A&M
23. West Virginia
24. Miami
25. UTSA

Missed opportunity

West Virginia had a 6-0 lead in game three of its series against Kennesaw State, looking well on their way to a clean three-game sweep of the Owls.

Unfortunately for Steve Sabins, the bullpen imploded following another strong five-inning outing from the big lefty Maxx Yehl. Bryson Thacker, Carson Estridge, and David Perez combined to give up four runs on five hits over the final three innings, allowing the Owls to steal Sunday’s game.

The loss frustrated West Virginia fans and rightfully so, but there’s no need to panic. The name of the game is to continue winning the series. You do that, you’ll find yourself in a position to make the NCAA Tournament and earn a high seed. Obviously, you don’t want to blow the opportunity of a sweep, especially when you’re up 6-0, but it’s not a loss that is going to ruin their resume. Losing the series, on the other hand, would have.

What’s next for the Mountaineers?

No single mid-week game this week for West Virginia. Instead, they’ll play a quick two-game series against Radford at home beginning Tuesday. They’ll get one day of rest before opening up a three-game series at home against Columbia, which will be the final series of non-conference play. WVU will have a single mid-week game against Maryland on Tuesday, March 10th, before beginning Big 12 action on the road against Baylor.

The full remaining schedule

Mar. 2-4 Radford

Mar. 6-8 Columbia

Mar 10 Maryland

Mar 13-15 at Baylor

Mar. 17 Penn State

Mar. 29-21 BYU

Mar. 24 at Marshall

Mar. 27-29 at Arizona State

Mar. 31 at Arizona

Apr. 3-5 UCF

Apr. 7 Marshall

Apr. 10-12 at Texas Tech

Apr. 15 at Penn State

Apr. 17-19 Houston

Apr. 21 Pitt

Apr. 24-26 at Cincinnati

Apr. 29 at Penn State

May 1-3 Kansas State

May 5 Marshall (Charleston, WV)

May 8-10 at Kansas

May 14-16 TCU

May 20-23 Big 12 Championship (Surprise, AZ)

Early the morning of Feb. 9, Ana, a 45-year-old mother of four, woke up in the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center outside Abilene. Bluebonnet, it’s called, so named for the toxic state flower. She was hustled from bunk to bus for a ride to Del Rio. By noon, she was standing in the middle of the International Bridge that connects Del Rio with Ciudad Acuña across the Mexican border.

Ana was told only: You’re free to go – back to Monterrey, which she left in 2006 and where her parents still lived. She did not know how she was going to get there. Or when she would see her girls again.

Only five weeks earlier, Ana had a job at an ice cream shop at Lombardy Lane and Brockbank Drive in northwest Dallas, where she’d worked for six years. A single mother, she alone cared for her daughters, two of whom are in elementary school – fifth and sixth grades – and struggle with dyslexia. Her 12-year-old, diagnosed with severe depression, had twice tried to harm herself just last year. Her eldest, a 17-year-old senior at Thomas Jefferson High School, is set to begin college in the fall.

Ana crossed the Rio Grande on an inflatable raft near Laredo 20 years ago for a life she couldn’t find in Mexico. She met a man in Lewisville with whom she had four children. He abused her, she said, so she left again, to start over in northwest Dallas.

Immigration officials gave her a preliminary court hearing: Aug. 24, 2027. Ana, who has no criminal record, went to the ICE offices on Stemmons Freeway around New Year’s Eve for her annual check-in.

And every time she returned home to her girls. Until Dec. 30, 2025, when she was detained by officers, then shuffled around the state – Dallas to Alvarado to Abilene – before being sent back to Mexico, leaving behind daughters, all born in Dallas, to whom she did not get to say goodbye.

“I was so scared,” said Ana, who, with her eldest, agreed to talk to me if I did not use her full name or her children’s names.

“And I was in shock,” she said. “The whole morning I was just praying thinking about what to do next. I thought I would see my lawyer or talk to someone about what was going on, but the way they took us, no one explained anything to us. I know I did something wrong when I came over without my paperwork, as I should have. But I wasn’t stealing or hurting someone; I was working for my family, providing.”

Ana spoke by phone from Monterrey, where, last week, she buried her father, whose heart failed him days after she was left on that bridge. She began to cry.

“The fact that they just took apart my family, it’s breaking my heart,” Ana said, trying to catch her breath. “There are a lot of people who are doing bad things. We’re just trying to provide for our kids. Why us?”

But she knows why. Everyone does. Because there have been so many stories like this in recent months it’s impossible to keep track.

Just last week, María de Jesus Estrada Juarez of California, who came to the U.S. when she was 15 and was a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipient, was arrested during her regular check-in and sent back to Mexico. In Alaska, a mother and her three children were sent to Tijuana within 36 hours of being detained by ICE. NBC News also recounted the story of an 11-year-old girl, a U.S. citizen, whose brain-tumor treatment was interrupted when her parents were deported to Mexico.

The Texas Civil Rights Project has been trying to reunite the parents with their 11-year-old girl so she can get the care she needs. I asked the Austin-based organization if they kept track of the number of parents without criminal records deported to Mexico while their children are left behind. A spokesperson said they do not maintain a database tracking such cases, but that “it happens very often under this administration.”

Which is more or less what other immigration advocacy and legal nonprofits told me: We don’t track that data. But it’s, you know, a lot. ICE didn’t respond to emails asking for that information, either.

But just because we’re inundated with these stories doesn’t mean we should turn a deaf ear to them, especially when they involve our neighbors. This feels especially personal, as Ana’s eldest will graduate from my alma mater – if she can survive the next few months of waking her sisters each morning, getting them to school, working late hours at her fast-food job, dealing with grown-up responsibilities suddenly thrust upon her and trying, somehow, to fit in homework.

“It wasn’t really a choice for me,” the 17-year-old told me. “If I don’t do it, who will? The hardest part is getting up every morning, because there’s no break for the rest of the day – it’s the same thing every day, the same loop. And if there is, I have to do laundry or get these girls to their Girl Scouts things.”

I never would have known of Ana’s story, and that of the children left behind, had I not been forwarded a newsletter from Now>Forward, the nonprofit once known as North Dallas Shared Ministries. In the newsletter was a brief telling of the tale, along with a plea for assistance, as the girls need food, rent, uniforms.

I was told to call Lynn Wilbur, a Girl Scout troop leader since 1983, when her own daughter turned 5, and, for the last decade, leader of an outreach program that provides financial assistance for girls who want to be Girl Scouts but can’t afford dues, uniforms, supplies, field trips. “Anything that has to be paid for,” Wilbur said.

There are some 60 girls in the program, most spread across Dallas ISD elementary schools, including Ana’s three youngest daughters. Where once the program was funded by a foundation, though, the troop is having to depend on private donations – begging and scrounging, Wilbur said.

“Now, we’re just trying to help the girls pick up the pieces, along with their lives,” the 80-year-old said. When I called, she was with Ana’s daughters.

Most of the girls in Wilbur’s troop are from Spanish-speaking homes. This is the first time one of their parents has been deported. But, she fears, it will not be the last. One mother recently asked Wilbur if she would take her daughter if she, too, is deported.

“The amount of fear is unbelievable,” Wilbur said. “My house is one place they let them come because they know they’d have to kill me before I let them in the door. This has got to stop. Unless good people step up and let their voices be heard nothing is going to change. That’s why I am talking to you. We can’t let this keep happening, especially to children.”

Wilbur taught Ana’s eldest how to pay bills, how to buy a car when her mother’s recently broke down, how to deal with insurance, how to be a grown-up at 17. The TJ student was never a Girl Scout. But Wilbur, the living embodiment of a slogan that demands a Girl Scout do a good deed daily, has surely taught her how to be prepared.

“Miss Lynn has always made us feel like we’re important, that we’re loved,” Ana said. Another small sob. “That we’re human.”

ORLANDO, Fla. — Lionel Messi scored twice in a four-goal second half, defender Telasco Segovia added a goal and two assists and defending champion Inter Miami CF rallied to beat Orlando City SC 4-2 on Sunday night, winning for the first time at Inter&Co Stadium.

Messi took a pass from Segovia and scored in the 57th minute to tie it 2-2, and Segovia scored unassisted in the 85th for the lead. Messi put the finishing touch on the victory when he scored off a free kick in the 90th.

“The victory belongs exclusively to the players,” Miami coach Javier Mascherano said after the game. “In the second half, they were a championship team. There were no tactics, nothing like that. There was heart, courage, possession, resilience, commitment. I think the team came out because they were champions last year.

“In the end, the players showed it. This victory is theirs.”

Messi’s first two goals of the season give him 52 in his first 55 regular-season MLS matches — 51 of them in his past 49 appearances. It also brought the reigning MLS MVP to 898 career goals scored, including 672 for Barcelona and 115 for Argentina.

“He’s the best player to ever play this sport. He’s a leader, and as a leader, he inspires others, but he also often needs to be inspired himself,” Mascherano said of Messi. “When he was driving forward, he had more attacking options, and with so many opportunities, he clearly has the ability to create chances like no one else, and that’s what allowed us to turn the game around.”

Marco Pašalić took a pass from Iván Angulo and scored in the 18th minute to give Orlando City a 1-0 lead. Pašalić has scored in four straight matches against Inter Miami.

Defender Griffin Dorsey set up Martín Ojeda for a goal six minutes later for a 2-0 advantage that stood through halftime.

Inter Miami cut it to 2-1 four minutes into the second half on Mateo Silvetti’s first career goal. Defenders Segovia and Facundo Mura had assists as the 20-year-old forward found the net in his fifth career appearance.

Segovia had eight goals and six assists as a rookie last season, while Mura collected his first assist in his first season.

Dayne St. Clair, the reigning goalkeeper of the year, turned away three shots — all in the second half of his second start with Inter Miami, but let in a soft goal for Orlando’s first.

Maxime Crépeau had four saves in his second start for Orlando City.

Teenager Colin Guske, 19, will miss Orlando City’s next match after the rookie picked up two yellow cards in his first start — the second one led to his exit in the 88th minute.

Inter Miami, which had never won in its previous nine trips to Orlando, was coming off a 3-0 road loss to LAFC.

Orlando City swept Inter Miami during the regular season last year and leads the all-time series 8-7-4.

Inter Miami plays D.C. United on Saturday at Audi Field. Orlando City is also on the road with a match against New York City FC.

Information from The Associated Press was used in this recap.