UNM baseball makes NCAA tournament

sports@dailylobo.com
@ThomasRomeroS

The New Mexico baseball team earned an at-large berth for the NCAA Tournament but ended up in one of the toughest regionals in the bracket.

On Monday, the Lobos (37-20) learned that they will play Arizona State in the Fullerton Regional. The other two teams in the regional are No. 5 Cal State Fullerton and Columbia.
The Lobos lost at Arizona State 4-3 in 11 innings earlier this season.

“I think we have a good chance at beating them. It’s tough to tell on a mid-week game pitching-wise,” senior shortstop Alex Allbritton said. “We have a good chance at beating them as long as our pitching and defense show up.”

UNM held a Selection Day Party at Doc and Eddy’s on Monday but the team was late due to its travel schedule. The Lobos had been on the road for about three weeks.

Last year, UNM went to the Los Angeles regional and won its first regional game versus San Diego 4-0 then dropped its next two games against UCLA 7-1 and Creighton 7-2. This is the Lobos fourth-straight tournament appearance and senior catcher Mitch Garver has plenty of experience.

“We’ve overcome that barrier of our first time being in a regional. It’s not our first time anymore and we have experienced people on our team and a lot of upper classmen,” Garver said. “We know what to expect and how the intensity is going to feel. It’s just a matter of playing our game and staying hot.”

San Diego State University defeated UNM 9-4 for the Mountain West Conference tournament title on Sunday. SDSU earned an automatic berth with the victory and drew UCLA in the Los Angeles regional. San Diego University and Cal Poly are the other teams in the regional. The winners of the Los Angeles and Fullerton regionals will face each other.

“We underestimated San Diego State and they took two right from under our feet,” junior first baseman DJ Peterson said. “Half of it is our fault, but they played well and they outplayed us, so we’ll give them credit.”

North Carolina University (52-8) was named the No. 1 national seed, Vanderbilt (51-9) was selected the No. 2 overall seed, Oregon State (45-10) No. 3, Louisiana State University (52-9) No. 4, Cat State Fullerton (48-8) No. 5, Virginia (47-10) No. 6, Florida State (44-15) No. 7, and Oregon (45-14) No. 8.

The regionals will commence on May 3 and will run through June 3 if necessary. The winners of the four-team, double-elimination regionals advance to the best-of-three super-regionals, which begin June 7. The winners of the eight super-regionals advance to Omaha, Neb., for the College World Series, beginning June 15.

Baseball vs. Arizona State
Friday
5 p.m. (MT)
ESPN 3