Five run leads were not the place to be this weekend. The Aggie baseball and softball teams combined to lose four five-run leads and in turn lose all four games. The Aggie baseball team dropped the final two games of their four-game set with Sacramento State after jumping out to 5-0 leads in both games. Fortunately for the Aggies just one of the two losses counted toward the conference standings but the Aggies' at-large profile took a bit of a hit, although the bizarre aspect of the RPI is that because the Aggies' RPI was so high (it actually only dropped to 25 from 19 entering the weekend series) the Hornets actually jumped 50-some odd spots with the two wins which somewhat neutralizes the bad nature of the losses. That combined with the Aggies' strong non-conference schedule and those opponents continuing to put up quality wins is helping to keep the Aggies' RPI inside the Top 50 (again, the upside of only having 18 conference games is that their impact of losses to lower RPI conference teams is neutralized by the overwhelming number of games against higher RPI teams).

Back to the conference situation. The Aggies' loss against Sacramento State on Sunday which counted toward conference play was tough because the other two conference series this past weekend resulted in sweeps. Nevada swept three from Louisiana Tech whom the Aggies host this weekend (more on that in a second) and San Jose State opened up league play (they were the odd team out last weekend) with a shocking three-game sweep over Fresno State in Fresno.

Louisiana Tech now sits at 1-4 in conference play coming into Las Cruces and is very much a wounded animal in desperate need of wins. The Aggies just need to continue to win series and hopefully pick up a sweep along the way. Both San Jose State and Nevada have done so and as we've stated before we think a 14-4 record will win the league which means you'll need to win every series and sweep at least two of those series during conference play.

Perhaps the biggest area of concern for the Aggies after the first two weekends of play is their pitching. Coming into conference play it had been steady but in the first weekend the starting pitching was shaky and this past weekend the relief pitching was shaky (at least in the final two games of the series). As was the case after the first weekend of play, it's a good sign that the Aggies have continued to be able to win despite not clicking on all cylinders.

Today's Links...

Aggie Men's Basketball
The Las Cruces Sun-News reports on Wendell McKines making the Portsmouth Invitational All-Tournament Team.

The Las Cruces Sun-News reports on the postseason banquet.

Aggie Baseball
The Sacramento State athletic website recaps the Aggies' loss yesterday.

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