Home Run-Hitting Huskies Host

Washington, the nation's No. 3 home-run hitting team, hosts BYU in a three-game series starting Thursday.

The Huskies bring a 22-13 record into the non-conference game with the Cougars, who are now at 14-18. Washington has the Pac-10's leading home run hitter with 14 dingers and has 59 homers. BYU has a total of 22 homers this season, being led by Ben Saylor with seven.

BYU will start lefty Patrick Wells (3-4, 5.93) in Thursday night's opener of the three-game series against Tim Lincecum (7-2, 1.65) a junior righthander who has thrown 28.2 consecutive scoreless innings entering this week and the past three weeks has been named Pac-10 pitcher of the week. On Friday BYU will throw Jesse Craig (2-5, 3.65) and on Saturday the Cougar pitcher will be Brandon Christiansen (3-2, 6.85).

"I was pleased with the way we responded when they scored and w answered them back," said BYU Coach Vance Law of his team's Tuesday night victory at Utah Valley State College. "Our pitching staff did what we asked them to do. Saylor (Ben), Hiestand (Jeff), Banks (Stetson) and Johnson (Seth) caused havoc for UVSC."

Thursday and Friday's games begin at 6:30 p.m. PDT and Saturday's game begins at noon PDT.

BYU leads the all-time series with Washington, 12-6-1.

The Washington-BYU games will be carried live locally on KOVO Radio 960 AM with Brent Norton calling the play-by-play and will also be available for both live audio and livestats on the Internet www.byucougars.com.

For more information on BYU's baseball team for this week, click on the PDF link at the top of this page.