Brandon Ast has found his role with Utah baseball.

The junior relief pitcher, a transfer from Wichita State, tossed seven innings of dominant ball Tuesday afternoon at Ute Field, as the Utes snapped a three-game slide with an easy 14-1 victory over UVSC.

Ast-who over his previous three starts had given up just four earned runs in 13 innings-was even better Tuesday, going seven full innings and yielding just one unearned run to earn his third win of the season. While the Utes (21-18) have a set three-man rotation for all their weekend series, Ast has come in and firmly entrenched himself in the fourth-starter role.

“I just love any role I can get-whatever I can give this team,” Ast said. “It’s just been working out right now and hopefully we can keep it rolling.”

While he is usually expected to go three or four innings in his mid-week starts, Ast was fresh enough to go most of the way, giving the Ute bullpen a bit of a rest.

“We’re a little bit down in our bullpen after the weekend. That was big for us to get seven innings out of him-probably one or two too many for what we’d like,” U head coach Bill Kinneberg said. “We’re stretching him out and he’s going to have to be valuable for us in the Mountain West tournament and could get some starts in conference here pretty soon.”

Playing with a defense that didn’t commit a single error didn’t hurt, nor did a Ute offense that gave him a big cushion early on. The Utes put up two runs apiece in each of the first three innings before really breaking it open an inning later. Ryan Khoury doubled in a run to get things going in the fourth and scored two batters later on Jay Brossman’s two-run homer, Brossman’s eighth of the season.

That gave the Utes a 9-1 lead and they never looked back. Even with a sizeable advantage, they continued to pour it on in the late innings. In the seventh, freshman Corey Shimada belted a three-run homer to the opposite field to put Utah up 12-1, and the team added two more an inning later.

“That’s huge,” Brossman said. “One mistake a lot of teams make when they put up a lot of runs early is they give up or think the game is over, and before you know it, the other team is back in the game. It’s huge to get runs every inning just to get the pitching staff that confidence.”

Khoury went 3-for-4 with three runs scored and a pair of RBI, increasing his average to a conference-best .453.

Kinneberg said Tuesday’s win-the U’s fifth in six meetings with the Wolverines this season-was a big one considering the team had just come off a disappointing showing against New Mexico. The Lobos took all three games in Albuquerque over the weekend, but a commanding double-digit victory may be just what the Utes need to get back on track.

“It gets a lot of pressure off us and gets us a lot of confidence back as a team,” Brossman said. “We struggled over the weekend, so it’s really good to come out here and get a win.”

With only a month of the season left to play, the Utes now prepare for-amazingly-their home conference opener, as UNLV comes to town for a three-game set at Franklin Covey Field.

The regular MWC schedule kicked off two weekends ago, in addition to the conference’s “preseason” tournament in San Diego in late March. Therefore, Utah has been on the road in each of the first three weeks of conference play-a streak that ends this weekend.

“I don’t know who made the schedule, but 10 Mountain West games in a row on the road is-I don’t know how fair that is,” Kinneberg said. “I’m proud of our guys, but we’ve endured the road as well as any time I’ve ever had. Thirty-eight games, and we’ve played four at home. Our guys have done a really nice job.”

The three-game series with the Rebels starts Friday night with first pitch scheduled for 6 p.m.

Corey Shimada barely slides safely into home during baseball’s win against UVSC on Tuesday. Shimada scored twice, helping the Utes to a 14-1 rout.