One of the biggest early season matchups in college baseball took place between No. 4 ranked TCU against No. 12 Cal State-Fullerton. All three games were close between the two schools as TCU lost two of three, and that was a theme for the Mountain West this weekend as only UNLV and BYU came out with a winning record.
TCU (5-3)
All three games of the series between Cal State Fullerton were close, well-contested matchups. TCU was hoping to take two games in this series with All-American picture Matt Purke was scratched in the final game with blisters on his throwing hand. A reason for losing two games to Cal State-Fullerton was due to the the offense has not been playing up to their potential. All-American outfielder Jason Coats has started the season on a slump and so far in eight games in hitting only 4-28 with only one extra-base hit on the season. The season is still young and losing twice to Cal State-Fullerton is not a terrible thing this early in the season, but it was good to matchup with a similar team to what they will face in the NCAA post season.
Air Force (3-5)
The Falcons took on rival service academy Navy and lost two of three. The first game was the best for the Falcons as their bats were alive in an 8-2 route and were led by Alex Bast who went two of four with three RBI as well as Matthew Roberts who went two of three with two RBI. Falcon pitcher Evan Abrecht had a great outing by striking out eight batters for the win. In the following two games the Falcons bats fell quiet as they lost 6-4 and 13-3.
UNLV (7-1)
The UNLV Rebels were the only Mountain West team to have a winning weekend as they took three of four from Central MIchigan. The Rebels offense has been on a terror this season and it continued through the series against Central Michigan as the Rebels scored 29 runs in four games.
BYU (4-3)
BYU went 3-1 this weekend by defeating Northern Illinois in two games and split two games with Texas Tech. In the one loss against Texas Tech, BYU lost 7-4 in part due to their inability to take advantage of their extra-base hits:
"I'm disappointed we didn't score more runs with all of our hits and extra bases," said BYU coach Vance Law. "We had runners at second base a lot with one out, then weren't able to get a couple of big hits. We put ourselves into a bind by walking too many and hitting a batter. Each time we scored they came back."
In the other three games BYU defeated Texas Tech 8-3, beat Northern Illinois 3-2 and 8-5.
In the rest of Mountain West action New Mexico went 0-4 against Creighton, San Diego State went 0-2 against San Diego with one game being postponed due to weather and Utah traveled to Arkansas and ended up losing all three games to bring their overall record to 0-5.