The wind was howling on Thursday evening at Santa Ana Star Field, but the Lobos howled louder in their first Mountain West Championship game — their first competitor: fourth-seeded Nevada.
Stellar pitching and great hitting all but sealed the deal for UNM (30-25-1), as they won, 7-2, over the Wolf Pack.
That pitching for the Lobos, though, came from one hand in Tyler Stevens, who pitched all nine innings for UNM. The junior right-hander gave up just two runs on seven hits, while only walking two and striking out eight Nevada batters in the process. For Stevens, it was a game that rhythm kicked, and he found his location on seemingly every pitch. But that performance hinged on a day that Stevens felt better than ever.
“I felt amazing,” Stevens said. “I woke up this morning, and I felt great and then got to the field and saw the wind blowing — it bugged me a little bit — but you have to pitch through it sometimes, and it makes me be better, which I was tonight.”
Hitting, too, played its part in the game for the first-seeded Lobos. They racked up nine hits as a team, especially in the fourth inning when UNM grabbed the lead and never looked back.
However, Nevada was the first team to put runs on the scoreboard in the very first inning when a two-run homer from the Wolf Pack’s Mike Echavia put them up 2-0.
After that, though, Stevens found his groove and retired the side in the second inning and fourth innings, while holding the Wolf Pack scoreless.
And that's when UNM’s bats caught fire, too. The bottom of the fourth inning saw the Lobos rally back from a two-run deficit. Jared Mang led off the inning with a single up the middle before a Carl Stajduhar walk, a wild pitch and a Danny Collier sacrifice fly brought Mang home for the Lobos’ first score. But UNM added on two more runs in the inning on a Hayden Schilling sacrifice fly and an Andre Vigil RBI single, putting the Lobos up 3-2.
Collier again flied out in the fifth inning to bring home another run, to give the Lobos a 4-2 advantage.
But after Stevens retired six straight Wolf Pack batters, the Lobos found themselves with another three run inning, this time in the bottom of the seventh. Austin Bell — who pinched hit for Beau Capanna to lead off the frame — singled in his first at-bat. That set up a Mang single before Stajduhar capped it off with a two-RBI triple off the right field wall. A Schilling sacrifice fly scored Stajduhar, giving the Lobos a 7-2 advantage.
“I thought it had a chance,” Stajduhar said of his triple looking like it might have been a home run.
From there, neither team scored the rest of the game, and Stevens continued to dominate the mound. He allowed only one hit in the eighth inning and one in the ninth, before closing out the game on a groundout to give UNM the 7-2 win.
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The Lobos will face second-seeded San Diego State on Friday at 7 p.m. Head coach Ray Birmingham realizes the challenge his team faces ahead but said that his team needs to have a similar approach.
“You don't change anything you do,” Birmingham said. “You just get better at what you do.”
Matthew Narvaiz is a sports reporter for the Daily Lobo. He primarily covers baseball and women's basketball. He can be reached at sports@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @matt_narvaiz.
