Beginning a nine-game road trip, BYU travels to Salt Lake City for a three-game series with the University of Utah starting this Thursday.
The Utes (5-13, 1-2 in the Mountain West Conference) will host the Cougars (10-19, 0-3) at Franklin Covey Field with Thursday and Friday's games beginning at 6 p.m. and a noon start on Saturday. Patrick Wells (3-2, 5.07) will get the opening-series start on Thursday with Paul Jacinto (0 6, 6.80) starting on Friday and Justin Su'a (2-1, 3.59) on Saturday.
The Cougars are 188-84-1 all-time against the University of Utah. Last year, BYU swept the Utes in regular-season action, winning all six games. The Cougars also knocked Utah out of the MWC Tournament with a 7-6 win last May. In the final regular-season game against the Utes last May at Provo, BYU rallied to score two runs in the ninth to win 7-6.
The 7-0 record against Utah in 2003 is the first time in 13 years the Cougars have gone undefeated against the Utes. BYU was 4-0 in 1990 against Utah. The Cougars have gone 39-23 against the Utes the past 10 years.
Two nail biters and a blowout sum up BYU's three-game series with UNLV last week in Provo. The Cougars lost 12-9 in 11 innings on Thursday after seven lead changes were exchanged with the Rebels. UNLV came back on Friday with a 17-1 blowout. Saturday, BYU had a comfortable 5-0 lead entering the fifth before giving up eight runs in the eighth inning of a 12 6 Rebels' win. Errors were plentiful for the Cougars as they committed 19 in the series accounting for 17-unearned runs.
On Thursday, Ranger Wiens threw out three runners at home in one game, and on Friday Wade Vest had a 10-game hitting streak end and BYU had the seventh-largest home crowd, drawing 2,293 fans. Brandon Taylor hit his team-leading fifth home run on Saturday.
All three BYU-Utah games can be listened to live on KOVO 960 AM and are also available on DirectTV and the Dish Network through the BYU Radio channel and over the Internet. All three games can also be followed live with Gametracker. Links to the webcasts and audio casts can be found at www.byucougars.com.