Former Carson star Darrell Rasner pitches for Nevada during the 2001 season. Rasner remains the last pitcher to record a win for the Pack in the NCAA Tournament.
Nevada Appeal file
Sports Fodder:
The Nevada Wolf Pack baseball team has a chance to reverse a disturbing trend of disappointing finishes for the school's three most high-profile sports this year.
The Pack football team lost its final six games last fall after a promising 3-4 start to finish in the Mountain West basement at 3-10, 0-7. The Wolf Pack men's basketball team lost six of its last eight games after an encouraging 15-10, 7-7 start to finish 17-16, 8-12 and short of the NCAA Tournament for the first time in three years.
The Nevada baseball team, though, can help Pack fans forget football and men's basketball's meltdowns by doing something this weekend it has never done as a Division I program. If the Pack captures its first-ever conference tournament at Mesa, Ariz., it will earn the Mountain West's automatic bid to the 64-team NCAA Regionals. The Wolf Pack will open tournament play on Thursday against the winner of Wednesday's UNLV-San Diego State game.
The Wolf Pack, which has played in the Northern California Baseball Association, West Coast Conference, Big West, Western Athletic Conference and Mountain West for the past five decades, has never won a postseason tournament (conference tournament or NCAA Regionals) in its Division I history. The last time the Pack won a postseason tournament was in 1965 when it beat Pepperdine and Chapman at Reno's Moana Stadium in the NCAA Small College Division Pacific Coast title under head coach Bill Ireland.
If the Wolf Pack, which won the Mountain West's regular-season championship this year with a 19-11 league record (33-21 overall) doesn't win this weekend's six-team tournament at Mesa's Sloan Park, its season will come to an end. The Pack, despite winning the league, has just the fourth-best RPI in the conference behind Fresno State, New Mexico and UNLV. No team in the Mountain West is ranked in the top 100 in the nation in RPI, so winning the conference tournament is mandatory to get to the regionals for everyone involved this weekend.
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The Wolf Pack will be the only team at Sloan Park this week that has not won a Mountain West tournament. San Diego State has won six tournament titles, New Mexico and UNLV have each won three, Fresno State has won two, and San Jose State won its lone title in 2023.
New Mexico meets San Jose State and UNLV will take on San Diego State to open this week's tournament on Wednesday while No. 1 seed Nevada and No. 2 seed Fresno State get first-round byes. The tournament will end on Saturday.
The Pack, despite its lack of conference-tournament success, has gotten to the NCAA Regionals five times. Four of Nevada's regional appearances, though, were in seasons when their conferences (1994, 1999 and 2000 in the Big West and 2021 in the Mountain West) did not have conference tournaments. The only time the Pack went to the regionals when it played in a league tournament was in 1997 when it went 37-17 in the regular season and 1-2 in the Big West tournament.
A conference tournament, though, really is the only fair way to determine which Mountain West team goes to the regionals this year. The top four teams (Nevada at 19-11, Fresno State at 18-12, New Mexico at 17-13 and UNLV at 16-14) all finished within three games of each other. The other two teams (San Diego State at 14-16 and San Jose State at 13-17) that qualified for the league tournament were just two and three games behind the top four. The two teams (Air Force at 12-18 and Washington State at 11-19) not invited to Sloan Park this weekend also could have qualified for the league tournament with a handful of well-placed wins. Washington State lost nine of its last 12 league games while Air Force lost 10 of its last 15.
The Wolf Pack won the regular-season title because it swept Fresno State in a three-game series May 2-4 at Peccole Park and because it went 7-2 combined against Air Force and Washington State. The Wolf Pack also got hot late, winning nine of 10 league games from April 26 through May 16 against Air Force, Fresno State, San Diego State and San Jose State.
The Wolf Pack and New Mexico each went 12-9 (.571) in the regular season against the other five teams in Mesa this weekend while Fresno State went 13-11 (.542). UNLV and San Diego State each went 10-11 (.476) while San Jose State struggled at 9-15 (.375).
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Carson High graduate Darrell Rasner is still the last Wolf Pack pitcher to win an NCAA Regional game. Rasner beat Fresno State, 13-5, on May 27, 2000, in the Stanford Regional. The Pack would be eliminated from that regional later that same night by Alabama, but Rasner's feat has now lasted 25 years and counting.
Rasner allowed just two runs and six hits over 5.2 innings despite walking six and striking out just two. The win gave him a 14-2 record on the season. George Moran and Jay Kenny pitched the final 3.1 innings to secure the victory.
It's been 25 years since Rasner beat Fresno State, but the Pack has played just three regional games since, losing to Alabama (6-5) in 2000 and UC Irvine (7-0) and North Dakota State (6-1) in 2021 at Stanford. The Pack is 5-10 in regional games.
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What, exactly, has happened to West Coast baseball? It's likely the same thing that has happened to West Coast football and men's basketball, but the West Coast once dominated college baseball.
Nine of the last 10 College World Series champions have been from east of the Mississippi River. Oregon State in 2018 is the only champion since 2013 from the left side of the Mississippi.
The Western United States used to produce the best of college baseball. The West, it seems, stopped dominating on a regular basis after Cal State Fullerton (2004), Oregon State (2006, 2007), Fresno State (2008), Arizona (2012) and UCLA (2013) won six of 10 titles during the last great stretch of West Coast baseball.
Before that it was USC in 1998, Fullerton in 1995 and 1984, Pepperdine in 1992, Stanford in 1987 and 1988 and Arizona in 1986, 1980 and 1976.
USC also won the title in 1948, 1958, 1961, 1963, 1968, 1970 through 1974 and again in 1978. Arizona State won in 1967, 1969, 1977 and 1981. Even California won in 1947 and 1957.
The best team in the West this year, as far as RPI is concerned, isn't even in a West Coast conference this year. Oregon State is 41-12 and ranked sixth in the nation in RPI and is playing as an independent this year. The second-best team in the West, Oregon at 41-13 and ranked No. 12 in RPI, is now in the Big Ten. Former Mountain West school TCU is ranked 17th in RPI and is 37-17 out of the Big 12.
The best Western conference in college baseball right now is the Big West, by far. The Big West has five teams (Irvine, Cal Poly, Hawaii, Santa Barbara and Fullerton) ranked from No. 24 to No. 100. Even the WAC (Grand Canyon at No. 93) and WCC (Saint Mary's at No. 94) has a team ranked above the Mountain West's top team (Fresno State at No. 124).
The good news for the Mountain West is that Hawaii and Grand Canyon will join Mountain West baseball for the 2027 season.
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The Wolf Pack baseball team turned its season around, it seems, with a thrilling 17-15 win at Air Force on April 26 in Colorado. The Pack was blown out by the Falcons, 15-5 in eight innings, after blowing a 5-0 lead to fall to 23-18 overall and just 10-9 in league play.
The 10-run loss was the type of loss that could send a team into a tailspin. And that's exactly what it looked like was happening the very next day when Air Force jumped out to a 14-4 lead after five innings. The Pack, though, scored four runs in the sixth and seven in the seventh on the way to a season-igniting 17-15 win.
The Pack went 10-3 overall and 9-2 in league play after that gut-wrenching 15-5 loss to Air Force to win the Mountain West regular-season title and earn the No. 1 seed in this week's conference tournament.
But it wasn't easy. The Pack has been playing for its postseason life ever since that 15-5 loss. Seven of the 10 wins since that 10-run loss were by two or fewer runs, giving the Pack valuable experience in winning close games heading into this weekend.