Home sweet home - at least for the weekend.
The UNM baseball team is glad to be back in the Land of Enchantment after a three-game losing streak that rode from the edge of the Sierra Nevadas to the Great Plains.
UNM dropped a 12-11 decision to BYU, only to follow that with two losses to Nebraska, 4-2 and 9-5.
"We're not playing our best right now, but now is definitely the time to turn it around, and we are fully capable of doing that," Ryan Honeycutt said.
After dropping a high-scoring game to BYU on Friday, the final game of the series was called due to rain.
UNM then teed off a two-game series against Nebraska, in which the Lobos were swept.
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Head coach Ray Birmingham said that if he could spare more hair, losing these games might have made him pull it out.
"I have pulled out so much hair in the last 30 years, I don't know where to pull from anymore," Birmingham said.
In Wednesday's loss to Nebraska, the Lobos blew a 3-0 lead heading into the fourth inning, but the Huskers rallied for a six-run sixth inning. Rafael Neda hit a solo home run in the top half of the ninth inning, but it wasn't enough.
"We made some mistakes offensively, and I am wondering if it's fatigue or what," Birmingham said. "I mean, we had so many chances to score some positive runs."
Mistakes aren't the only thing holding the Lobos from running away with the best record in the Mountain West Conference. The injury bug is, too.
Third baseman Dane Hamilton broke his thumb in Tuesday's game. Hamilton started all of the Lobos' 44 games until Wednesday.
Birmingham said he will miss his offense.
"It makes me want to cry," Birmingham said. "That guy had got it back, and there wasn't anything he wasn't hitting that wasn't short of a laser."
The Lobos, 31-14 overall and 11-6 in the MWC, are tied with BYU atop the conference leaderboard and are right in the thick of things as far as a MWC regular-season championship is concerned.
Birmingham said the Lobos have an opportunity to receive an at-large bid for the College Baseball World Series come June.
"If (winning were) easy, everyone would be doing it," he said.
UNLV, a familiar conference foe, is coming to town this weekend. It is the last home series for the Lobos. But to Birmingham, the three-game set against the Runnin' Rebels is just more baseball to be played.
"It's huge. It's like every other game," Birmingham said.
Still, Saturday is Senior Day for 10 Lobos, something that has Honeycutt motivated.
"Of course we want to go out and win for our seniors. They have been here the longest," Honeycutt said. "They're our leaders and all good guys. It's just another game, but we want to go out and give it our best for them."
Baseball vs. UNLV
Friday, 12 p.m.
Isotopes Park
