(RV)/#11 Baseball on the road to face Texas College in RRAC play

The first couple weeks of the conference schedule won't decide who walks away with the Red River Athletic Conference crown in late April.

But it's an important time for championship hopefuls, like UHV, to put their best foot forward and position themselves for a run at the title.

Last week, the Jaguars (12-2, 3-0) did that by sweeping University of the Southwest and matching the program's best-ever start through 14 games (2008). Now, the team, which moved up four spots to No. 11 in the NAIA Ball Media Poll this week, will look to continue that momentum when they head to Tyler to face Texas College (1-9, 0-3) in a three-game conference series Saturday and Sunday at Woldert Park.

"There's a lot of good teams in this conference and every game matters," said head coach Jonathan Stavinoha. "When it comes down to it, you play 30 conference games, so there's not a lot of room for error. One or two games here or there could cost you that top spot."

The Jaguars' starting pitchers of Brady Parker, Jonathan Jones and Julian Garcia continued their dominance on the mound, not allowing a run while striking out 25 batters combined in 22 innings last week.

Parker and Garcia each threw complete games last week with the latter earning RRAC Pitcher of the Week honors.

Garcia, a 6-foot-4 right-hander, struck out a season-high nine batters over nine innings while allowing just four hits and a walk to shutout the Mustangs in Saturday's series finale. He joins Parker and Jones as UHV pitchers to garner weekly honors and it was the fourth consecutive week a Jaguar earned weekly honors after Terry Burrel III was named Player of the Week last week.

The Jaguars' pitching staff is second in the RRAC and 15^th nationally with a 3.06 ERA.

"It's fun to watch them perform at a high level every single time they step on the rubber," Stavinoha said. "They come in and compete. It really instills confidence in the rest of the team and the hitters go get them some runs to help us win some baseball games. It's very relaxing as a coach when you have the confidence they're going to go out and perform every time out."

UHV enters this weekend's series second in the RRAC in both batting average (.332) and on-base percentage (.473).

The Jaguars have nine players hitting over .300 this season and five with double-digit RBIs – Hal Perez leads the team with 15 this season, which is tied for the league lead.

Last week, Jose Montanez opened his home run tally with homers in each the first and third games against Southwest to bring his batting average up to .394 and extend his hitting streak to six games. DeeAndre Torres has a team-leading seven-game hitting streak heading into this week's series.

Burrel and graduate senior Cristian Garcia have hit the cover off the ball in their debut season for the Jaguars. The two Houston natives are hitting a team-leading .441 and .462, respectively

 "It's not only the averages, it's the on-base percentage and quality of ABs," Stavinoha said. "When our guys don't reach, they put up a good fight, work up the other guy's pitch count and other things to make it really tough on opposing pitching staffs. All the way down the lineup, we've had that this year and it's been a joy to watch.  Hopefully we can keep improving on that."

Stavinoha understands the Steers aren't necessarily the same team from recent years – Texas College beat University of Health Sciences and Pharmacy two weeks ago to snap a 99-game losing streak.

The Jaguars own a 29-10 edge in the all-time series with wins in each of the last nine against the Steers.

"We've got to play the game, respect the game and do everything we can to make the current pitch the most important pitch of the season," Stavinoha said. "We're going to do that this weekend and hopefully handle business in Tyler to come back with three wins."