Finishing with Third-Straight Week on the Road

After being involved in three-straight sweeps and ending on the winning side only once, BYU looks to rebound with a three-game series at UNLV beginning Thursday.

The Cougars' record fell to 13-22 and 3-6 in the Mountain West Conference after being swept by New Mexico last week. Besides sweeping a three-game series at the University of Utah, BYU has lost seven games since a six-game winning streak ended in the Pepsi-Johnny Quik Classic championship game at Fresno, Calif.

The series in Las Vegas will conclude a nine-game road trip for the Cougars who have played 32 of their first 35 games on the road. BYU will conclude the season by playing 13 of its final 19 games at home beginning with a three-game series against San Diego State on April 15.

Patrick Wells (4-3, 5.37) will get the opening-series start for the Cougars on Thursday at 6:30 p.m. (PST). Paul Jacinto (0-7, 5.68), who pitched a complete-game seven hitter last week but failed to pick up his first win in a 1-0 loss to New Mexico, will start on Friday at 6:30 p.m. (PST). Justin Su'a (2-1, 4.72) will start in Saturday's game at 2 p.m. (PST).

Entering the UNLV series with a .245 team batting average, Jeff Hiestand leads BYU with a .312 percentage. In conference play, Brandon Taylor and Ryan Chambers lead the team with a .425 and .400 batting averages.

The Cougars are 0-3 against UNLV this year after being swept at home by the Rebels in March. The last BYU win against UNLV came in the MWC Tournament on May 24, 2002. Since then, the Cougars have lost nine straight to the Rebels.

UNLV enters the series with a 20-10 record. The Rebels are tied with San Diego State in the MWC with a 7-2 conference record and are four games ahead of fourth-place BYU in the standings.

All three BYU-UNLV games can be listened to live on KOVO 960 AM and Saturday's game is 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 and live audio. Links to the webcasts and audio casts can be found on BYU baseball's schedule page at www.byucougars.com.