MWC BB: New Mexico Tops TCU 5-2

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LAS VEGAS, Nev. - The 2012 Mountain West Baseball Championship's No. 1 seeded New Mexico picked up a come-from-behind 5-2 victory over No. 2 seed TCU on Friday night at Earl E. Wilson Stadium. The Horned Frogs jumped out to an early 2-0 lead but the Lobos bounced back, posting a single run in five straight innings beginning in the fourth. The win grants UNM an opportunity to wrap up the tournament with a victory in Saturday night's 7 p.m. PT contest versus the winner of the San Diego State versus TCU elimination game at 3 p.m. PT.

The win went to UNM's Gera Sanchez (8-2). The right-hander allowed just two runs in six-and-a-third innings pitched. He struck out six and walked just two. The loss went to Preston Morrison (9-1) after he allowed four runs in six innings of work.

TCU got on the board first, plating a run in the second on Jerrick Suiter's RBI single to center. The Frogs added one more in the third when Josh Elander took a 1-2 pitch over the wall in deep left-center, making it 2-0 TCU.

New Mexico countered with a run in the fourth and one in the fifth. In the fourth, Ben Woodchick and DJ Peterson led off with back-to-back singles. Woodchick advanced to third on Ryan Padilla's fly out to right and scored on Josh Melendez's sacrifice fly to right, 2-1.

And then the lights went out ... literally. The Lobos and Horned Frogs were delayed approximately 17 minutes in the bottom of the fifth due to an outage of the stadium lights at Earl E. Wilson Stadium. When play resumed, Kyle Stiner promptly hammered a 1-2 pitch to deep center for a double. He would later come around to score and tie the game at two on Alex Allbritton's single to left.

The Lobos picked up their first lead of the night in the sixth on Trey Porras' one-out RBI single to right. From there, New Mexico would only build upon the lead, adding runs in the seventh and eighth and securing a victory over the team with which they shared the Mountain West regular season crown.

TCU takes on San Diego State in an elimination game at 3 p.m. on Saturday. The Aztecs defeated host UNLV, 15-9, earlier in the day to hold off elimination. The winner of the TCU-SDSU game earns the right to take on New Mexico in the 7 p.m. contest. Should New Mexico win tomorrow night, they will secure the tournament championship. If the Lobos are defeated, the same two teams will meet on Sunday at 1 p.m. to decide who wears the tournament crown and earns the MW automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.