THIS WEEK IN THE MOUNTAIN WEST
The Mountain West Conference Softball Championship will take place May
11-13 at Eller Media Softball Stadium on the campus of UNLV.
The opening game will see third-seeded Utah taking on the No. 6 seed New Mexico at 11:30 a.m. PST on Thursday, May 11. No. 4 UNLV and No. 5 Colorado State will be the other opening round match on Thursday at 2 p.m. San Diego State and BYU will receive opening round byes. The Cougars will play the winner of Utah and New Mexico at 4:30 p.m. on Thursday, while the Aztecs will go against the winner of UNLV and Colorado State Thursday at 7 p.m.
The Mountain West Conference Softball Championship game will be on Saturday, May 13, at 5:30 p.m. PST with the winner receiving an automatic bid into the 2006 NCAA Softball Championship. The game will be televised live on CSTV and can be heard on the Mountain West Conference website. Listen to all the Mountain West Softball Tournament games live on the conference website (www.theMWC.com).
MOUNTAIN WEST CONFERENCE QUICK HITS
BYU
With sweeps over San Diego State and UNLV, BYU tied with San Diego State for MWC wins this year (15)...BYU's 40 wins make it the second year in a row the Cougars have hit the 40-win plateau...Last season the Cougars finished 45-14 overall...Ianeta Le`i tied a school record for home runs in a season (20) with her blast in a 12-6 game two victory over UNLV...The Cougars will be the second seed in the tournament for the first time in MWC history.
COLORADO STATE
Colorado State is 7-9 all-time at the Mountain West Conference Tournament...The Rams have held every seed in the conference tournament and this year enter as the No. 5 seed...In 2004, CSU was ranked first, and finished second during the 2003 regular season before taking home the MWC Tournament Crown...The last time that CSU entered the tournament as the No. 5 seed, the Rams fell in two straight games to New Mexico (2-0) and Utah (4-1) in 2001...The Rams and Rebels have met three times before, in 2002, 2003 and 2005...The Rebels hold a 2-1 advantage, but CSU defeated UNLV, 7-1, in the second round in 2003 en route to the tournament championship.
NEW MEXICO
Kristina Schmallen moved into second on the UNM single season list for RBI with her 51st RBI of the season at Colorado State...The one walk that UNM gave up in the doubleheader against Colorado State is the fewest for a doubleheader this season...No walks in game one marks only the third time this has happened all season...The Lobos will be the sixth seed in the tournament for the second time in MWC history...New Mexico holds a 6-12 all-time record.
SAN DIEGO STATE
As of Sunday, SDSU's .732 winning percentage is the highest in school history (.650 in 2003 was its previous best)...Other records that have already been set this season include highest conference winning percentage (.833 beat previous record of .800 set in 2003), highest home winning percentage (.769 (20-6) beat previous record of .750 set in 2003), most Mountain West wins (15 beat previous record of 14 set in 2004 and 2002), highest Mountain West winning percentage (.833 (15-3) beat previous record of .800 set in 2003), most consecutive wins (13 tied record set in 2003) and most home runs (23 beat previous record of 19 set in 1999)...Catcher Erin Floros is batting .600 (21-for-35) with eight RBI over the last 11 games and has also reached base safely in 27 of her last 28 starts.
UNLV
The Rebels closed out the second half of their Mountain West Conference season with a 6-4 mark...The six wins rank as the second-most in the stretch run of conference play (behind 2005's nine wins)...The eight conference wins come in for a tie for the second-most league wins in Rebels history, since MWC play began...This past weekend the Rebels had six players hitting above the .300 mark...Maggie Livreri led the team with a .538 batting average, seven hits, three doubles and eight RBI...The Rebels have yet to win the MWC tournament, with 2005's runner-up finish being the highest placing.
UTAH
Diana Phillips and Jackie Wong had a hit in each of the six games last week...Phillips raced her hitting streak out to a career-long 21 games while Wong upped her career-best hitting streak to 20 games...The Utes enter the tournament having homered in eight of their last nine games and in each of their last seven contests....The team finished with 33 home runs this season, a far cry from the 21 they hit in all of 2005...The four hitters at the top of Utah's batting order (Wong, Phillips, Jessica Shiery and Devina Quintero) accounted for 60 percent of the team's hits last week...They belted out 35 of the team's 58 hits...Utah has tallied 106 two-out RBI this year and has plated 221 runs, making 47.9 percent of Utah's RBI occuring with two outs on the board.
