Photo by Kavin Mistry
By Matt Weiner (@MattWeiner20) – BSB Beat Reporter
The Spartans’ defense needed to be perfect or a notch below it to take the rubber match against the Runnin’ Rebels. Facing their lineup is like taking a stroll through Elm Street. The line up used on Sunday entered the game with an average slashline of .332/.416/.543. It’s plenty to keep opposing pitchers up at night and enough to have nightmares filled with flashes of Joey Walls and Henry Zeisler teeing off.
Which is why an even bigger emphasis is placed upon defense than usual. Any extra base given away will turn into a run.
The Spartans learned this the hard way in the first inning when catcher Omar Gastelum tried to gun down a stealing Austin Kryszczuk at second base.
The throw was on target but skipped away to the outfield, helping Kryszczuk advance to third.
During that same at bat, Diego Alarcon sent a flyball out to center to score Kryszczuk and hop on the board first.
In the following inning, left fielder Robert Hamchuk misread a slicing line drive from Braden Murphy, resulting in runners on second and third with one out, instead of a runner on first with two outs. Eric Bigani scored Edarian Williams from third base on a ground out to Theo Hardy at short.
All of the extra pitches Aaron Eden had to make came back around to bite him when Diego Alarcon launched a three-run homerun in the fifth inning.
In retrospect, this was the huge punch that put the Spartans on a road to perdition. The Spartans would only score one more run after this while UNLV went on to score five.
Going into this game, one can assume UNLV would deliver huge punches like this one from Alarcon, but it doesn’t mean the game’s decided right then and there.
However, if you give away outs, then these blows feel insurmountable.
Even after Alarcon’s three-run bomb, errors were still being made in the field. None of which was bigger than Charles McAdoo booting a ground ball at second base with two outs and the bases loaded in the seventh inning that extended UNLV’s lead from three to five.
Trying to hold down UNLV’s lineup is a lot like the fisherman on the show “Wicked Tuna” trying to haul in a 700-pound Bluefin Tuna that has the power of 10 bulls and 15 rhinos.
There is little room for error, from initially reeling it in to precisely throwing a nabbing with it a spear once it’s close to the boat to obtain it. Any small detail goes astray during that time period and the whole mission is wasted.
The Spartans showed that their offense can do plenty to hang with the big dogs of the Mountain West. However, if the defense isn’t able to back up a pitching staff that has a conference worst 7.62 ERA, then they will continue as the Mountain West to teams like UNLV and Nevada.