A great recurring theme (of the few this season) for Aggie baseball has been the ability to close out series’ and dominate the final game of three-game matchups with conference opponents. This has slightly kept them from hanging at the bottom of the conference. Although they lost the first two games in nail-biting fashion, New Mexico State (6-21, 4-11 WAC) impressed in the final game against California Baptist (16-16, 9-6 WAC).

Finally passing the midway point of the season, the Aggies are looking to center in on what is preventing them from jumping in the standings. Out of their six wins this season, four of them have been against conference opponents. Two of those wins were in the final game of the series (Sam Houston and California Baptist).

If NMSU can just channel the intensity that they play with in closing games into the first two games in the series, they’ll start seeing sustained improvement.

We saw a glimpse of what that looks like in their electric Easter series against the Lancers of CBU.

The Aggies jumped ahead early in game one, getting on base and scoring five runs via RBI. This was all before the Lancers had a huge five-run inning in the third to come right back – an all too familiar trend for NM State this season. After Edwin Martinez-Pagani reached on error in the bottom of the frame, the Aggies would not be able to cross home plate for the rest of the game. The 603 fans in attendance at The ‘Skew were treated to free baseball but CBU scored in the top of the 10th on an RBI single. New Mexico State, however, was not able to answer back and would drop the first game of the series 7-6 in 10 innings of play.

The Lancers rode the momentum into Friday’s middle game. They started early with two runs to start the game, three runs in the sixth, three more in the ninth, and held the Aggies scoreless until the very final frame. One thing that we know about this New Mexico State squad is that they will fight until the very end no matter what. Down 8-0 going into their last three outs, the Aggie offense erupted for six hits and five runs, but their valiant effort just wasn’t enough. This made the middle game interesting but lost it 8-5 going into Saturday for the series closer at noon.

Saturday’s 13-7 win over Cal’ Baptist saw improvement from the home team and their ability to play from behind and answer back when their opponents went up on them. Stellar plate appearances from Kevin Jimenez, Keith Jones II and Nick Gore lifted the Aggies over the Lancers in the final game. New Mexico State had 15 hits, 10 of those bringing runners in to score, and drew 10 walks (season-high) en route to a dominating win in the series finale.

Coach Keith Zuniga and his players will look to channel their games and play more consistently to tack on more wins in the ladder half of the season. They will travel to Tucson, Arizona, to take on Arizona on Tuesday, April 11, before they come back home to host the Lumberjacks of Stephen F. Austin for a three-game WAC weekend series. A shift in the season is bound to come, the Aggies must remain consistent.