Five games in Colorado this week represent BYU's final road trip outside Utah during the regular baseball season.
Three Cougars making the trip are graduating this week, but are passing up walking in the convocation and graduation exercises. Brandon Christiansen (3-3, 6.94, graduating in sociology) is scheduled to start on the mound Wednesday, while Patrick Wells (4-4, 5.33, graduating in community health) is scheduled to start on Saturday. Relief pitcher Cortland Andrews, who graduated last December in construction management and has been accepted to BYU Law School this Fall, made the Colorado trip. Fellow reliever Anthony Bingham did not make the trip and will be graduating this week in political science.
The Cougars, 17-22 overall and 4-6 in the Mountain West Conference, play a pair of non-league games on Tuesday and Wednesday at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley at 2 p.m. BYU boards the bus again, traveling a couple hours south to play Air Force in contests which have been moved from the Academy to the AAA Sky Sox Security Service Field in Colorado Springs. The games will all be at 2 p.m., with the exception of Saturday's game, which will see the first pitch at noon.
Matt Jensen (0-4, 7.91) will be BYU's starting pitcher on Tuesday. Jordan Muir (4-0, 2.00) gets the starting nod on Thursday and Jesse Craig (3-6, 4.43) will take the hill for BYU on Friday.
Northern Colorado is 14-25, while Air Force is 10-23 and 1-9. BYU won two of three earlier this season in Provo against UNC. This is the first meeting of the year against AFA, the only league team BYU did not meet in the Preseason Tournament at San Diego last month.
"I am pleased with our offensive approach and our competitive at bats," said BYU Coach Vance Law. "If we play 27 outs we are going to give ourselves an opportunity."
In 10 of BYU's last 13 games either Ben Saylor or Jeff Hiestand have homered. Saylor has hit seven homers in that span, while Hiestand has hit five. At the start of this month they both homered in the same game.
The games at UNC will be carried live via audiostream, as will Saturday's game at AFA. All of the AFA games will be on the Internet with livestats. Links to these sites are available at www.byucougars.com. All of the AFA games will be broadcast live locally by KOVO Radio (960 AM).
For more information on BYU's baseball team for this week, click on the PDF link at the top of this page.