By Jared Longland
Nevada took its first home series of the season, winning the first and last game, against conference foe San Jose State.
The home series was also Wolf Pack head coach Jay Johnson’s first, and he took a lot of positives from the Peccole Park homestand.
“It was a lot better series than Nevada played last year toward the end of the season,” Johnson said. “As coaches we can see the upward trend going in the direction that we want it to.”
The Wolf Pack (4-7, 2-4 MW) snapped a six-game losing skid on Friday, topping the Spartans 6-4. Starting pitcher Michael Fain was awarded the win after 5.2 innings pitched with only one unearned run.
Catcher Jordan Devencenzi keyed the offense, going 2-for-4 with an RBI. Brad Gerig, Jay Anderson and Justin Bridgman also chipped in RBIs on Friday night.
The following day, Nevada was dealt a devastating 7-4 loss. The Pack led 4-3 at the start of the ninth inning, but a flurry of walks, hit batters and errors tied the game.
In the tenth inning, the Spartans tacked on three runs behind a two-run bomb by first baseman Matt Carroll to finish off a comeback win.
Nevada rebounded with a 8-3 win on Sunday. Starting pitcher Trenton Brooks pitched five innings, giving up three earned runs and striking out three, while also hitting 2-for-2 as designated hitter. Barry Timko took the win for the Wolf Pack, his second of the season.
On the offensive end, Kyle Hunt went 3-for-4 with an RBI, and Kewby Meyer went 2-for-5 with two RBIs.
The conference series win comes after the Wolf Pack were swept last week by Fresno State.
“The Mountain West is a really good conference,” Hunt said. “There’s a lot of tough competition, and we just got to keep playing our game. It doesn’t matter who’s in the other dugout, we just need to keep doing what we need to do to win.”
Despite winning the series, Johnson sees room for improvement.
“We’re still kind of finding out who we are,” Johnson said. “Baseball is weird sometimes because you can’t really control the wins and losses, but you can control the development. I’m very proud of them for this weekend, but we got to keep improving.”
Nevada will trek to face San Diego State (8-3, 2-1 MW) this weekend. Akin to the Wolf Pack, the Aztecs took two of three games against the Spartans earlier this season.
“We’re just taking it one game at a time, doing the best we can to win that game, and when that’s over we worry about the next one,” Brooks said.
Jared Longland can be reached at euribe@sagebrush.unr.edu.
