If there is one thing that became apparent following the conclusion of the Mountain West Conference Baseball Tournament last weekend, it was the way every team swung the bats?this conference can flat out hit the ball.
Other than the championship games Saturday, there were very few tournament games in single digits.
After one contest last week, you wondered if you were at a football game or baseball game, as the BYU Cougars beat UNLV 13-11.
There was never a safe lead in the tournament. The deficit didn’t matter either. Teams could not afford to feel comfortable when they had leads.
If a team led by 8, 7 or 6 runs, you could still count on a rally.
For the U baseball team players, they learned that lesson the hard way in their opening game.
Utah held a 9-1 lead on UNLV, only to see the Rebels rally to score 11 runs in the final three innings to knock of the Utes 13-9. UNLV would later eliminate Utah by a 13-7 score.
“This became a hitter’s tournament,” U coach Tim Esmay said after the Rebels eliminated the Utes. “This is by far one of the best offensive conferences.
“When we first got here, our pitching staff had to battle for everything they got. The whole time during [the UNLV] game, nobody in the dugout felt like it was out of hand, just because of the way this tournament was going.”
UNLV turned around and held a 6-0 lead after two innings against BYU.
The UNLV lead didn’t last long, as BYU came back to win 13-11 in a four-hour affair?the longest game in MWC Tournament history.
Later in the tournament, BYU trailed 7-0 to UNLV, but scored 8 runs in the seventh inning to win 8-7 and advance to the championship game.
UNLV’s 8-run rally over the Utes was the biggest comeback in the conference’s three-year history.
The teams set a record by combining for 34 hits. UNLV cranked out 18 hits while Utah smacked 16 of its own.
The old record was also held by Utah in last year’s 15-14 win over BYU. In that game, Utah finished with 17 hits while BYU added 16.
While each team was forced to go deep into its pitching staff, pitching took a back seat due to the way players swung the bats. All the records were set on the offensive end?both team records and individual records.
One player who torched the U pitching staff was UNLV’s David Trujillo. Trujillo finished the tournament with 5 dingers, 4 coming against the U pitching staff.
Along with offensive records that were set, the attendance mark was also shattered as 4,057 fans entered the gates at BYU’s Larry H. Miller Field prior to Saturday’s championship games.
In Saturday’s championship, there were 2,131 fans who saw BYU beat San Diego State win 6-4, and 2,396 fans saw the Cougars win their second straight Mountain West Tournament title.