BYU completes sweep of U.

PROVO — In BYU's final regular-season contest of the season, it was no contest.

This time, there was no drama required.

The Cougars cruised to a convincing 12-5 triumph over Utah Saturday before a crowd of 1,686 at Larry H. Miller Field. Along the way, BYU sent its three seniors out with a victory in their last appearance at home and completed a three-game sweep of the Utes.

"To sweep our arch-rivals is pretty sweet for our guys," said coach Vance Law.

Prior to the game, the Cougars paid tribute to the three seniors — pitchers Jesse Craig and Matt Jensen and designated hitter Apana Nakayama. Jensen didn't pitch Saturday, but because the game was a rout, he saw some late-inning action in left field.

"It's a little bittersweet to play in my last game here," Jensen said. "But it's a great way to go out. There's nothing better than sweeping Utah."

BYU heads into next week's MWC tournament as the No. 2 seed. The Cougars receive a first-round bye and will play Thursday at noon in Las Vegas. Utah is the No. 3 seed and opens the tournament Wednesday against UNLV.

Unlike the previous two games of the series, the Cougars eliminated the suspense relatively quickly.

In the games on Thursday and Friday, the Utes took a 4-0 lead in the first inning, but the Cougars rallied both times to win by the identical score of 5-4. BYU won on a Kent Walton home run in the seventh on Thursday, then watched Leon Johnson belt a walk-off homer in the ninth on Friday.

On Saturday, after spotting Utah a 2-0 lead, highlighted by Ute third baseman Erich Kemp's solo home run, BYU exploded for five runs in the second inning and added four more in the fourth.

That big cushion allowed Law to empty his bench, giving seldom-used players a chance to gain some valuable experience.

For the series, the Utes scored a total of nine runs in the first inning, and a total of four runs in the other 24 innings combined. In all three games, the Cougars came from behind to win.

"We showed a lot of character in this series," Jensen said. "We fought back to win those first two games. Today, we came out more like we want to come out in every game. I think we learned something about ourselves."

Walton led the Cougars Saturday, going 4-for-5 and scoring three runs while shortstop Dan Vargas collected three hits, including a pair of doubles, knocked in three runs and scored twice.

"It's good we put up 16 hits (as a team) today," Vargas said. "That will help us going into the tournament."

Jake Wortham started for BYU and gave up four earned runs in five innings. He picked up the win to improve his record to 7-4 on the season. Utah starter Lucas Trinnaman pitched just 1 1/3 innings and was collared with the loss, dropping his record to 0-6.

The Cougars finished the regular season with a 17-7 record in the MWC and a 35-18 mark overall. The Utes fell to 12-12 and 24-29.

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E-mail: jeffc@desnews.com