Written By: NM State Athletic Dept.

WICHITA, KS - New Mexico State junior catcher Zac Fisher was named one of 12 semifinalists for the 2012 Johnny Bench Award presented by BaseballSavings.com as announced by the Greater Wichita Area Sports Commission yesterday.

The initial watch list started with 43 catchers from across the nation in NCAA Division I baseball and is now down to 12. Fisher, is one of two catchers from the Western Athletic Conference to be on the list with the other being Sacramento State's Derrick Chung.

Fisher leads the Aggies with a .360 batting average (73-of-203) heading into the final series of regular season play. He has posted 17 doubles, five home runs and 54 RBI on the season and is hitting .346 in WAC play.  Continue Reading This Post >>

Written By: NM State Athletic Dept.

LAS CRUCES, N.M. - New Mexico State women's basketball head coach Mark Trakh announced that Samantha Donald, a point guard from Box Hill Senior Secondary College in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, signed a National Letter of Intent this week to play basketball at NM State beginning in the fall of 2012.

Donald is a 5-6 guard hailing from Melbourne, where she most recently earned 2011 Most Valuable Player honors at Box Hill Secondary College while averaging 11.8 points per game. Donald also averaged five rebounds, four assists and two steals per contest.  Continue Reading This Post >>

bleedCrimson.net: Your thoughts on reaching the 400 win milestone?
Rocky Ward: For some reason with my milestones we seem to struggle. Maybe it's me, maybe it's just the way it is. I know it took us a long time to get 200, I think 300 I kind of flew past. It's a significant number for me. To be honest when I started 16 years ago I thought I'd be there sooner but I was 32 years old and a young coach and thought I knew everything, you know? I'm pleased that I got to it and more than anything it's starting to get close to that 500 number and that's kind of a magic number in coaching. Dad won 1,000 but there's only been a few guys to do that. So I'm a long ways away from that mark but I think 500 is a significant mark as well. It's kind of a personal thing. You're saying, "Okay, I'm in range of getting to a number that when I started this career would be important to me when I got to it." It's a step along the road.

bc.net: How significant is it that the 400th win came against a schedule like this year's?
RW: It's marred a little bit during this last stretch but yeah, to have wins against Arizona and Texas Tech and people like that and Wake Forest as part of the wins that led to 400, it is important. It's a mark of the quality of program that's still being built. We still have a ways to go, there's still a lot of things to be done within our program and a lot of things that haven't been done yet. I'm really disappointed, it would have been great to have win number 400 come in an 11th inning win against New Mexico but you can't always get things your way. To be honest, I thought I'd get it at Hawai'i and the end result, it never really matters, it's a personal deal and it's just a mark along the way. The most important number today really is 32. We put a win in the win column which is what we needed to do going into San Jose and it's important that we play well against them. We have struggled coming into the tournament for a couple of years and we're kind of doing the same thing now but it would be good to go into the tournament with a four game winning streak and a one or two seed. It would be something that would make the last two weeks and the way we felt about it go away a little bit.  Continue Reading This Post >>

The New Mexico State baseball team bounced back from a heartbreaking extra-innings loss to in-state rival New Mexico with a 5-3 wire-to-wire victory over future WAC foe CSU-Bakersfield on Wednesday night.

Starting pitcher Casey Collins was solid on the mound for the Aggies as he allowed just three Bakersfield hits through the first seven innings before tiring in the eighth. Collins loaded the bases and walked in a run before being replaced but left the game with a 5-1 lead.

The Aggie offense struck quickly as they took a 1-0 lead in the top of the first as Zac Fisher hit a sacrifice fly to score Bryan Karraker who had singled with one out and stood on third after a Parker Hipp double.

The Aggies tacked on three more runs in the third as Tanner Waite tripled with one out and was brought home by a Karraker double. After a Parker Hipp walk, Zac Fisher grounded out to the pitcher but advanced the runners. Robert Lecount singled through the left side to score Karraker and HIpp giving the Aggies a 4-0 lead.

The Aggies would extend the lead to 5-0 the next inning getting back-to-back one out doubles from Kyle Phillips and Bryce Griffin.  Continue Reading This Post >>

The Aggie baseball team lost a heartbreaker last night in Albuquerque on a 2-run walk-off home run in the bottom of the 11th inning. The loss was the Aggies' ninth in their past ten game as the losses keep coming in new and interesting ways. Perhaps the most interesting thing about this late slide has been the Aggies have not played poorly. Last night, as has been the case throughout this losing stretch, they just were unable to capitalize on a few opportunities and saw the opposing team take advantage of a couple of Aggie miscues late. The Aggies led the game early 4-0 and then 4-2 but then fell behind 7-4 after a somewhat controversial safe call on a double-play ball that would have gotten the Aggies out of the inning leading 4-3 but instead four more runs came across after the called.

The Aggies rallied to tie the game in the top of the seventh, led 9-7 in the top of the eighth and brought in closer Scott Coffman but gave up two runs after two errors on the Aggies (including one by Coffman) in the bottom of the eighth allowed UNM to tie the game, led again 10-9 but another error in the bottom of the ninth allowed the game-tying run to score.

This was a well played game but certainly one that the Aggies feel like slipped through their fingers. The Aggies left the bases loaded in the sixth, seventh and eighth innings and really could have blown the game open with a couple of base hits in there.

The one bright spot for the Aggies is that their offense looks like it's starting to come around just in time for the final weekend of conference play and the conference tournament. After scoring two runs or fewer in five straight games, the Aggies have put together a seven run and a ten run game and have 30 base hits in the last two games. The key to them winning games again will be their ability to start hitting getting those hits with runners in scoring position.

The Aggies have a quick turnaround as they face Cal State-Bakersfield tonight at 7:00 p.m. (MDT) in Bakersfield before heading on to San Jose to close out the regular season with a three game series starting Friday.

Last night was a bad night for WAC teams as all three teams in action lost. The Aggies and Louisiana Tech both lost in extra innings and San Jose State lost to UC-Davis.

Today's Links...  Continue Reading This Post >>

Written By: NM State Athletic Dept.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - The New Mexico State baseball team (31-20) took the season series-finale with the University of New Mexico (30-22) to extra innings but lost 12-10 on a walk-off home run at Isotopes Park, Tuesday, May 15.

The Lobo lead-off hitter got on with a single in the bottom of the 11th before the UNM catcher hit a two-run homer over the left-field wall to end the 4 hour, 16 minute baseball game.

The Aggies tallied 10 runs on 17 hits but gave up three errors, with two costly errors coming in the bottom of the eighth as UNM scored two unearned runs. The Lobos ended the night with 12 runs on 17 hits and marked one error.

The Aggies led 4-0 after two and a half inning but the Lobos overcame that and took a 7-4 lead after posting a five-run sixth inning.  Continue Reading This Post >>

The Aggie baseball team heads to Albuquerque today to take on the Lobos in the final game of this year's Rio Grande Rivalry series. The Aggies have won the first three meetings and have clinched the series and are now looking for a clean sweep of the Lobos. The Aggies are also looking to generate some positive momentum as they head into the final week of the regular season after what has been a rough couple of weeks on the diamond.

Losers of eight of their past nine games, the Aggies have fallen victim to some bad baseball luck in addition to a bit of a slump offensively (and in the middle relief). Every series the Aggies have played has seen them suffer at least one unlucky play or bad bounce that has completely changed the complexion of a game or in some cases a series. It all started at Baylor in the second game of the series. The Aggies led the top ranked Bears 4-2 and appeared to have a double play which would have ended a Baylor threat. Instead, an egregiously bad call by the first base umpire (and we mean egregiously bad, one of the worst calls of the season in any sport the Aggies have played) kept the inning alive for Baylor and the floodgates opened. The Aggies would eventually lose the game 14-4. Would the Aggies have won that game? Who knows, but the Aggie offense had the Baylor starting pitcher under constant pressure and that inning allowed the Bears to stabilize the game in their favor.

The Aggies were the victim of some terrible, terrible luck in the first game in Hawai'i as Ryan Beck had to work a five-out inning (it's the first five-out, three strikeout inning we've ever seen). Beck recorded a strikeout for the final out of the inning but the pitch got away from catcher Zac Fisher. The Aggies would have been able to record the out down at first base, however, the batter's bat hit the ball causing it to carom away from Fisher and toward the Hawai'i dugout and it allowed the runner at second to advance to third. Fisher again recorded the third out of the inning on the very next batter but again a wild pitch on the strikeout allowed the runner to not only reach base but allowed the runner at third to advance home and score and in a series at Hawai'i where runs are at a premium, those kind of bad bounces can be costly.

Finally, this weekend the Aggies got a walk-off home run from Zach Voight in the bottom of the 12th inning against Fresno State. What could possibly be bad luck about a walk-off? Well, in the ensuing celebration, Voight suffered a severely sprained ankle and is now out for an undetermined amount of time. Voight has been the anchor in the infield this season and has also be one of the Aggies' leaders on the field.

As we noted with Aggie softball earlier this season, sports are fickle and a bounce here or there in your favor can completely change the complexion of a game, a streak, a season and unfortunately for the past three weekends, the bounces have gone away from the Aggies.

The good news is that the Aggies can turn things around starting today and they still have a shot at winning the regular season title if they can sweep San Jose State this weekend. Sports also seems to be somewhat cyclical and often times shows a little bit of symmetry and the last time the Aggies were mired in a bit of a down cycle offensively, they bounced back with a 16-12 victory over the Lobos in Las Cruces. Three games later they would start their school-record winning streak.

Tonight's game is scheduled for a 6:05 p.m. first pitch and can be heard on KSNM AM 570 and online via Aggie Access (subscription required).

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bleedCrimson.net: Your thoughts on the weekend series against Fresno State?
Rocky Ward: Well it didn't go as planned. We came in to the weekend with a losing streak that was weighing on us a little bit and the history of the Fresno State games in Las Cruces has not been good. We haven't played well at home against them for some reason, one of the only clubs that we haven't. They had won the last two games against Sacramento State and had scored pretty well and that had been their problem. They swung the bats pretty well in the first and last games, of course neither team swung the bats very well in the second game. Same thing, we've struggled recently scoring and getting key hits and we had some opportunities early in the game that we didn't capitalize on and that's been the theme. We haven't pitched terribly well in the middle of games and it's been a problem for us. That kind of bit us again

Game two Adam Mott and Scott Coffman were awesome. We struggled throughout the game offensively but the game two starter for them was really good and we did a really good job against him. We hit a lot of balls hard. It was probably one of the best baseball games that's been played in quite a while. Lots of great defensive plays, a lot of balls hit hard and a lot of pretty good pitching as well. To give up the run in the seventh and then to turn around and get one on top of it was pretty important to us and then we got the longest outing of Scott Coffman's career, four and two-thirds of baseball where he was just awesome again. We get the walk off home run out of Zach Voight which ended up being a bit of a two-sided coin because in the celebration afterwards he sprained his ankle and we lost him for an undetermined amount of time.   Continue Reading This Post >>

The 2012 WAC baseball regular season race comes to a close this week with six of the seven teams finishing up their final three game series. As usual it's been a wild and wacky race and as is nearly always the case, the tournament field is neither set nor has the regular season champion been determined. The WAC lead has been bounced around like a hot potato with nobody willing to take hold of it.

As a refresher the preseason coaches poll looked like this: 1) Fresno State, 2) San Jose State, 3) Hawai'i, T4) New Mexico State and Nevada, 6) Louisiana Tech, 7) Sacramento State.

As we head into the final weekend of play, Sacramento State is the leader in the clubhouse at 11-7 and will make their first WAC Tournament appearance since 2008. At 10-5 Nevada is the only team that controls their own destiny in terms of the regular season title. A series victory by the Wolf Pack over Hawai'i this week gives them the regular season title. Both New Mexico State and Hawai'i have seen their grasp on the regular season title slip through their fingers. The Aggies have lost 5-of-6 over the past two weeks to slip from first all the way into a tie for third with Hawai'i and the Warriors hold the head-to-head tiebreaker due to their series sweep. Likewise the Warriors saw their regular season title hopes take a massive hit as they were swept by Sacramento State and like the Aggies, fell from first to third.

At the bottom of the league sits San Jose State (5-10), Fresno State (6-9) and Louisiana Tech (6-9). The three teams will battle for the final two spots in the tournament with the winner of the Battle of the Bone (Louisiana Tech at Fresno State) securing one of those two spots. The loser could still make the tournament but their fate will also be determined by what happens in the New Mexico State vs. San Jose State series.

So the final three series in conference play look like this:

Nevada (10-5) vs. Hawai'i (8-7)
San Jose State (5-10) vs. New Mexico State (8-7)
Fresno State (6-9) vs. Louisiana Tech (6-9)

For the Aggies to win a share of the regular season title they will need to sweep San Jose State and have Hawai'i take at least two of three from Nevada.

Here are our projected seedings based on the Aggies' potential record in the final series.  Continue Reading This Post >>

Written By: NM State Athletic Dept.

LAS CRUCES, N.M. - The New Mexico State baseball team dropped the series to Fresno State after losing the rubber match 14-7 at Presley Askew Field, Saturday, May 12.

The loss drops NM State to 31-19 overall and 8-7 in Western Athletic Conference and the Bulldogs move to 23-24 on the year and 6-9 in league play. The Aggies posted its seven runs on 13 hits, while Fresno State crossed the plate 14 times on 18 hits.  NM State tallied three errors on the afternoon with a huge on the Aggie leftfielder in the top of the third inning that was followed by five Bulldog runs.

Starting pitcher Michael Ormseth was credited with his second consecutive loss after giving up nine runs on nine hits and is now 7-2 on the year.  Fresno State starter Thomas Harlan is now 7-3 on the season with eight strikeouts in 6.1 innings of work.  Continue Reading This Post >>