With a weekend of games still left to be decided, the participants of the upcoming Western Athletic Conference tournament know who they are.

The Sacramento State baseball team will join Fresno State, San Jose State, New Mexico State, the University of Hawaii and the University of Nevada-Reno in Rushton, La. from May 22-25 in the double-elimination tournament. The winner will earn a spot in an NCAA Regional tournament the following weekend.

“Our main goal from the beginning of this whole season has been to win the WAC tournament,” senior outfielder Jeff Hannah said. “I think when we get there we’ll have a very good shot. It’s all about who’s playing hot down the stretch.”

The Hornets will have to find a consistency in their play that they captured during a seven-game conference winning streak spanning from late March to early April.

“The three components that are always important are: You’ve got to play catch, pitch well and you’ve got to hit. We’ve done all three pretty good at different times during the year and we had a stretch where we did all three at one time pretty well,” coach John Smith said.

Postseason mistakes are magnified and the Hornets know they will have to play their best defensively to have a chance to win the tournament. Senior outfielder Ryan Blair said the team has been working hard to eliminate mental errors as well as physical ones.

“You’re going to have to be really good at your bunt defenses,” Blair said. “Playing for that one run is going to be crucial. If you lose, you go home basically.”

The Sac State bullpen allowed eight runs in a four-game series with the Hawaii Rainbows from May 2-4, including a three-run ninth inning in the final game in an 8-7 loss. The Hornets dropped three out of four games to Hawaii, who could be a potential match-up in the WAC tournament.

“A key for us to get back (to playing well) is getting good performances out of our bullpen. In Hawaii, I don’t think they were as good as they’ve been all season,” Smith said. “We had a couple of opportunities to close out a game and we didn’t.”

It can be said that a team’s legacy is built on the way it handles pressure situations in games that decide a season’s outcome.

“Every aspect of our team is going to have to play at a high level for us to be successful (in the tournament),” Hannah said.

Louisiana Tech will host the WAC tournament at J.C. Love Field even though it failed to qualify for it as the last place team in the conference. Sac State hit 12 home runs as a team at that very ballpark in a three-game sweep of the Bulldogs in early April. Hornet players and coaches have called it a “hitter’s ballpark” because of its small dimensions and the way the ball travels with the high humidity.

“We love playing back there – our guys loved it,” Smith said. “That ballpark is built for us. I wish we could play 20 games a season in that ballpark.

“The ball seems like it carries a little bit because the wind usually blows out to dead-center(field), which helps it,” Hannah said. “We like that field like we showed early in the year and I think we can do the same in the WAC tournament. It will just be a matter of taking care of business.”

“The humidity is the big thing,” Blair said. “The minute you walk out of the hotel, you feel like you’re drenched.”

Smith said he thinks that this year’s tournament will be more “wide-open” for the first time in the two years his team has gone because the home team is not in the tournament.

“Any time that you’re the home team, you have the advantage because you’ve got the crowd going for you and the energy level goes up another notch,” Smith said.

Sac State currently sits in fifth place in the WAC and will try to improve on that when it hosts the first-place Fresno State Bulldogs in a four-game series this weekend at Hornet Field.

“Those boys can play,” Smith said. “They are not as potent as they’ve been the last two years but they are still very good and they are going to be a very tough challenge for us.”

The Hornets have not beaten the Bulldogs in 11 attempts as members of the WAC for the past two seasons. The last time the two teams met was in the first round of the last year’s WAC tournament, when Fresno State won 10-2.

“I think we just get down mentally because they seem to have our number,” Blair said. “They’ve always had a good pitching staff. I think they have a few guys who were supposed to be potential first-round draft picks. They’ve got some guys who throw hard and this year I think we have the hitting that can hit the power pitching.”

“I think they’re a good team,” Hannah said. “Obviously they’re in a good spot in the conference right now. They’ve been taking care of business lately.”

If the Hornets are able to improve their position in the standings, they will likely avoid having to play a top-seed, which will increase their chances of success.

“This is the time that we need to start peaking,” Smith said. “We’re starting to turn that corner to be where we need to be.”

Sac State’s veteran leadership has been influential the entire season in getting the team to the point where it has a chance to compete in the tournament.

“Most of our leaders lead by example,” Hannah said. “Not necessarily doing it vocally but just showing the younger guys the ropes and the day-to-day aspects of playing because it’s a grind.”

Andrew Eggers can be reached at [email protected]