April 9, 2005

Final Stats

LAS VEGAS - UNLV baseball ended its three-game losing streak and avoided a sweep by BYU on Saturday afternoon as the Rebels beat the Cougars 10-6 at Earl E. Wilson Stadium.

Ryan Bird and Matt Fry each hit home runs to lead the Rebels offensively and help them improve to 15-21 overall and 9-3 in the Mountain West Conference. The win kept UNLV within one game of BYU in the league standings as the Cougars dropped to 10-2 in the MWC, 23-8-1 overall. The Cougars won the first two games of the series the Rebels.

Rebel starter Derek Rodriguez (2-4) earned the win after being staked to an early lead, going six innings and giving up two earned runs on eight hits. Blake Torgerson took the loss for BYU, giving up four runs, two earned in 2.1 innings of work before leaving the game with an injury.

UNLV jumped out to the lead in the bottom of the third, scoring four runs to open the scoring.

CJ Lang and Ryan Kowalski hit back-to-back doubles to plate the first run and after a JC Sibley single moved to Kowalski to third, he scored on a Mike Cruz infield single. Torgerson committed an error and also hurt himself trying to field the ball, allowing Sibley to advance to third on the play. Zeke Parraz drove in Sibley on a sacrifice that moved Cruz to second then he was driven in on a single by Justin Tellam, making the score 4-0.

UNLV tacked on another run in the fourth on a RBI single by Sibley that scored Fry, pushing the lead to 5-0.

BYU got on the board in the top of the fifth, scoring a run on a sacrifice fly by Sean McNaughton that pushed across Ben Saylor. BYU added another run in the sixth when Apana Nakayama led off the frame with a solo home run, cutting the UNLV lead to 5-2.

Unlike the night before when the Rebels let a late lead slip away, they put the game away in the next two innings.

Fry drilled his second home run of the year, a solo shot over the right-center field fence, to put the Rebels up 6-2. UNLV then added four more in the seventh to push the margin to 10-2. With runners on the corners and one out Chris Bonnell drilled a double that cleared the bases and then Bird followed with his second home run in 2005 to make it an eight-run game.

BYU scored four in the eighth to make it interesting, and had two men on in the ninth with two out in the top of the ninth before UNLV reliever Kyle Tabeek struck out Ryan Chambers to end the game.

UNLV now hits the road for a three-game MWC-series against Utah in Salt Lake City, Utah, with the first game set for Friday afternoon at 2:00 p.m. (PT).