KALAMAZOO, Mich. – The Western Michigan baseball team continues its trip out west this week with a pair of games at UNLV.

SERIES INFO
Game One: Tuesday, Feb. 24 | 9:05 pm | LIVE VIDEO | LIVE STATS
Game Two: Wednesday, Feb. 25 | 3:05 pm | LIVE VIDEO | LIVE STATS

FOLLOW ALONG: @WMUBaseball

LEADING OFF

• Western Michigan continues its West Coast swing this week with a pair of contests at UNLV
• The Broncos are in the middle of a stretch of 11 straight away from home to open the 2026 season
• Western Michigan and UNLV are meeting for the first time ever on the diamond this week
• WMU picked up one win in three games over the weekend at the Tony Gwynn Legacy Tournament
• Western Michigan dropped its first two tilts to Omaha before beating tournament co-host UC San Diego
• In Sunday's victory over the Tritons, WMU's pitching staff limited the home team to two runs on four hits
• Ricky Kidd worked a career-high 5.0 innings to pick up his first win as a Bronco
• The bullpen quartet of DJ Thompson (1.0), Matt Hoover (1.1), Turner Doran (0.2) and Adam Lehmann (1.0) kept UCSD scoreless for the final four frames
• Tanner Mally was an on-base machine, going 8-for-12 and reaching base at a .714 clip for the tournament
• Mally comes into Tuesday with a .500 batting average, the third-highest in the MAC
• Drew Howard went 7-for-13 (.538) at the dish, including a 5-for-5 game against Omaha on Friday
• Western Michigan comes into Tuesday with a .991 fielding percentage, the ninth-best in NCAA Division I
• The Broncos were error-free in all three games last weekend

STAYING OUT WEST
Western Michigan continues its run of 11 consecutive games away from home to start the 2026 campaign this week with a pair of contests at UNLV.  The Broncos will then travel back to California this weekend for a three-game series in Northridge against CSUN.

SERIES HISTORY
The Broncos and Rebels are meeting for the first-time ever on the diamond this week. 

LAST TIME OUT
Western Michigan is coming off of a 1-2 weekend at the Tony Gwynn Legacy Tournament in La Jolla and San Diego, Calif. The Broncos dropped their first two contests of the tournament to Omaha, and then got a dominant pitching performance from their staff to knock off tournament co-host UC San Diego 5-2 on Sunday afternoon.

STAFF STYMIES UC SAN DIEGO
The WMU pitching staff put together its best performance of the young season on Sunday afternoon in a 5-2 victory over UC San Diego. Exactly one week after the Tritons upset #1 UCLA in Los Angeles, the Broncos limited them to two runs on four hits. After allowing a home run in the third inning, starter Ricky Kidd retired the final seven batters he faced on the way to a career-high 5.0 innings and his first victory for the Brown and Gold. Behind Kidd, Western Michigan shut UCSD out over the final four frames thanks to the relief quartet of DJ Thompson (1.0), Matt Hoover (1.1), Turner Doran (0.2) and Adam Lehmann (1.0).

SETTING THE TABLE
Leadoff hitter Tanner Mally continued his hot start to the season at the Tony Gwynn Legacy Tournament, going 8-for-12 (.667) at the plate and reaching base at a .714 clip for the weekend. The junior is hitting an even .500, the third-highest mark in the conference, through two weekends and owns a .621 on-base percentage (5th in the MAC). Going back to last season, Mally has reached base safely in 21 consecutive games.

HISTORIC HOWARD
Second baseman Drew Howard followed Mally's lead with a big tournament out of the two hole in Western Michigan's lineup, going 7-for-13 (.538) with a pair of multi-hit games. The senior opened the weekend by going a perfect 5-for-5 at the plate on Friday against Omaha, setting a new career high for hits and coming within one knock of tying the single-game school record. He also became the first Bronco to have five hits in a game since Jackson Kitchen hit for the lone cycle in program history on May 10, 2024, against Northern Illinois. Howard closed out the second weekend of the young season ranked fifth in the conference with a .458 batting average. 

MASHING MALONEY
Rounding out the terrific trio at the top of WMU's order, Michael Maloney had a pair of multi-hit games and launched his second homer of the season over the weekend. Through two weeks, Maloney ranks seventh in the MAC with a .435 batting average. 

DIGGING IN DEFENSIVELY
Western Michigan played stellar defense at the Tony Gwynn Legacy Tournament and did not commit a single error for the weekend. The Broncos have gone errorless in four of their first six games and currently boast the ninth-best fielding percentage in all of NCAA Division I at .991.

GO DJ, THAT'S MY DJ
Senior righty DJ Thompson has already made a team-high four appearances out of the Bronco bullpen and made the most of them, keeping opponents off of the scoreboard while limiting them to a .182 batting average over his 3.0 innings of work.