“Whenever and wherever” seems to be UNM head baseball coach Ray Birmingham’s unofficial motto.
Anytime, anyplace, Birmingham said he and his boys will play the best teams that college baseball has to offer.
“I am proud to be a New Mexican, and I am going to go to Texas and tell them,” Birmingham said.
So tell ’em, Ray.
The Lobo coach and his team will have an opportunity to do just that when UNM opens up the season on the road against last year’s NCAA College World Series runner-up, Texas. The three-game series is slated to start Friday at 2 p.m. and will finish up on Sunday.
The Longhorns are TheCollegeBaseballBlog.com’s preseason favorite to win the College Baseball World Series in June, and are, coincidentally, ranked preseason No. 1.
“I am putting them against the best teams in the country right away, and obviously Texas (is one of them),” Birmingham said. “And Texas is on the schedule because I jumped on it when an extra week got put on the schedule to start the year. I said ‘I am calling Texas.’ So, I called and I argued with them. But some of those guys are friends of mine and they were nice enough to put us on their schedule.”
UNM, according to the Texas’ probable pitching rotation, will have to face one of three of Texas’ stud pitchers, Taylor Jungmann.
Jungmann pitched in four games during the Longhorns run to College World Series National Championship game 2009. He posted a 3-0 record, while striking out 15 batters in only 15.1 innings pitched.
As if that wasn’t enough, Texas returns four pitchers from its 2009 pitching rotation.
Whatever you do, don’t ever doubt Birmingham’s mindset. The third year head coach has all the faith in the state of New Mexico in his own young pitching staff.
Mike Lachapelle, a new pitcher in the Lobos’ bullpen, is a junior college transfer from Pima Community College in Arizona.
Lachapelle said he isn’t intimidated about going in front of 7,000 crazed Texas faithful fans at UFCU Disch-Falk Field.
“It’s a lot different than junior college, that’s for sure,” he said. “I think we have a great team, though. I think that we are going to go in there and are definitely (going to) open up some eyes. We are going to shock Longhorn nation.”
Lobos’ left fielder Max Willett, who was named to the All-American Preseason team alongside Rafael Neda and Ryan Honeycutt, wasn’t as deliberate in his statement, though the senior said he is eager to play Texas.
“Ah man, we are excited to get down there and finally play someone different,” Willett said. “What better way to do that than to go into No. 1 and go down there (to Austin) and test where we are as a team right away?”
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Now that the telling has been told, we’ll see if the Lobos show what needs to be shown.
