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UNLV Defeats BYU To Claim Third Straight Mountain West Conference Baseball Championship The Rebels go 2-0 on Championship Saturday to earn the automatic berth into the 2005 NCAA Baseball Tournament. May 28, 2005 SALT LAKE CITY, Utah - The UNLV Rebels took the long way, but won their third consecutive Mountain West Conference Championship Saturday night at Franklin Covey Field. UNLV entered the day needing two victories over BYU and that's exactly what it got. UNLV (34-27) forced a winner-take-all, second championship game with a 9-5 victory in the first game. The Rebels came back to take a 7-4 win in the title game, clinching their third straight MWC title and a berth in the NCAA Tournament. With the championship game tied 4-4 after the top of the fifth, UNLV scored three unanswered runs and held on for the three-run victory. Chris Bonnell ripped a one-out double down the left-field line. The Rebels grabbed a 5-4 lead when the next batter, Ryan Bird doubled to right-center, scoring Bonnell. UNLV put another single run on the board in the sixth. Ryan Kowalski doubled with one out and came around on a C.J. Lang single. The Rebels added an insurance run in the eighth. Lang was hit by a pitch, advanced on a wild pitch and later scored on a Zeke Parraz RBI single to right, making it 7-4. Kyle Tabeek, one of five UNLV pitchers to see action in the title game, allowed a leadoff walk to BYU's Apana Nakayama in the ninth. But Tabeek struck out Jeff Hiestand, got Ben Taylor on a fly ball to the warning track in right-center and coaxed a ground ball to second base off the bat of Ben Saylor to end the game. Tabeek earned his eighth save, pitching 2 1/3 hitless, scoreless innings. BYU (39-19-1) took a 1-0 lead after one inning when Sean McNaughton led off with a triple and scored on a groundout. UNLV responded with four runs in the third to go on top 4-1. The Cougars tied the score at 4-4 in the top of the fifth. Taylor delivered an RBI single, followed by a two-run double that settled on the chalk down the right-field line off the bat of Saylor. Wayne Foltin picked up the win for the Rebels, going 1 1/3 innings and allowing just one hit. He moved his record to 1-2. Brandon Christiansen suffered the loss in 1 2/3 innings of relief for BYU. He fell to 4-2 on the season. In game one, UNLV scored the last four runs and got a spectacular relief effort from Matt Wagner, who actually tossed the first three innings of game two as well. BYU tied the game 5-5 in the top of the fifth against UNLV starter Koji Pupo. The Cougars' Sean McNaughton led off the inning with a solo home run, knotting the contest. One out later, a single and a walk chased Pupo from the game. Wagner took over with runners at first and second with one out. He induced Taylor into an inning-ending double play. BYU only mustered one hit and didn't advance a runner past first base the rest of the way against Wagner. The UNLV offense made a winner of Wagner, scoring four unanswered runs from there on out. Tyler Beranek's RBI double in the bottom of the fifth ended up being the game-winner. The Rebels added three more in the sixth, getting an RBI double from Mike Cruz, a bases-loaded walk from Ryan Bird and another run off a Justin Su'a wild pitch. Wagner went 4 2/3 innings to improve his record to 5-3. Mitch Woolf suffered the loss for BYU in 1 2/3 innings of relief work, falling to 2-4.
2005 MWC BASEBALL CHAMPIONSHIP ALL-TOURNAMENT TEAM
Designated Hitter: Apana Nakayama, Jr., BYU CHAMPIONSHIP GAME NOTES No. 1 seed UNLV won its third straight MWC Tournament title with a 7-4 win over BYU tonight. The Rebels are now 3-0 in title games, while the Cougars are 2-1. The No. 1 seed is 3-2 all-time in MWC Tournament title games, while the No. 2 seed is 0-3. In six MWC Tournament championship games, the team to score first has an all-time record of 1-5. In this year's tournament, the team that scores first holds a 9-2 record. UNLV became the second MWC team to have lost a game in the MWC Tournament, then come back on Championship Saturday and go 2-0 to win the tournament title. BYU was the other team to accomplish this feat in 2002, losing to San Diego State 11-10 in the semifinal round, then coming back to beat the Aztecs twice (6-4 and 5-3) in the championship round to capture the 2002 MWC Tournament crown. UNLV earns an automatic bid to the 2005 NCAA Tournament. The Rebels hold a 9-18 record in nine NCAA appearances. Overall, the MWC has a 4-8 record in the NCAA's since the league was formed in 1999-2000.
BYU's Jeff Hiestand went 1-for-6 from the plate in two games today, reaching base in both games. He now has reached base in 45 consecutive games and 49 of his last 50 games overall.
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