The battle for third place in the Western Athletic Conference is coming down to the final day of the season.
The Nevada Wolf Pack baseball team split a doubleheader with the San Jose State Spartans on Saturday in San Jose, losing the first game on a wild pitch, 11-10, and winning the second game, 7-6, because of some sloppy Spartans defense.
The Wolf Pack, Spartans and Louisiana Tech Bulldogs are all tied at 11-12 in WAC play with one game remaining in the regular season. Louisiana Tech split a doubleheader with Sacramento State on Saturday, losing 5-4 and winning 2-1.
The Pack, in order to finish third, needs to beat San Jose State and it needs Sacramento State to beat Louisiana Tech. Louisiana Tech owns the tiebreaker against Nevada by virtue of its 3-1 record against the Pack this season.
The Wolf Pack scored four times in the fourth inning of the first game to take a 4-1 lead against the Spartans. Brian Barnett drove in a run with a sacrifice fly, Garrett Yrigoyen drove in a run with a single and Carlos Escobar drove in two runs with a single for the 4-1 lead for starting pitcher Brock Stassi.
Stassi, though, couldn't hold the lead and was knocked off the mound in the bottom of the fourth inning. San Jose State scored four times in the fourth off Stassi and reliever Jayson McClaren to take a 5-4 lead.
The Pack, though, tied the game at 5-5 in the fifth on a triple by Stassi and a single by Nick Melino. The teams then traded five-run innings -- San Jose scored five times in the fifth to take a 10-5 lead and the Pack tied it at 10-10 with five runs in the sixth -- in this wild WAC game.
The Pack's five-run outburst was helped along by a walk, error, hit by pitch and a sacrifice fly.
The Spartans, though, pushed across the winning run in the bottom of the seventh (the first game of WAC doubleheaders are seven innings) on a single, stolen base, ground out and wild pitch by reliever Tim Culligan.
In the second game it was the Spartans who wasted a big early lead. San Jose jumped out to a 5-0 lead after five innings of Game 2 off Pack starter Jeremy Cole. Cole allowed seven hits and walked four in five innings of work.
The bullpen -- namely Mark Joukoff -- saved the day for the Pack.
Joukoff blanked the Spartans from the sixth through the eighth innings, allowing the Pack to tie the game and take the lead.
The Pack scored four runs in the sixth to cut the Spartans lead to just 5-4. Barnett drove in a run with a double, Hugo Hernandez had a sacrifice fly and two runs scored when Michael Turay reached on an error.
Two more Wolf Pack runs scored in the ninth inning for a 7-5 lead off San Jose reliever John Austin. Turay put down a successful squeeze bunt to score one run and Austin threw the ball away to allow another run -- the eventual game-winning run -- to also score.
The Wolf Pack had tied the game at 5-5 on a Tommy Niebergal single in the eighth inning.
Matt Gardner then survived a shaky ninth inning in relief of Joukoff to earn his sixth save of the year despite allowing two hits and a run.
The Wolf Pack (22-29) will close out the series and the regular season today (1 p.m.) against San Jose State (33-23).
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