San Jose, Calif. - The San Jose State University baseball team earned its first Western Athletic Conference regular-season championship since 2000 with a 4-2 victory over the University of Nevada at Municipal Stadium on Saturday, May 16. The Spartans then went on to sweep the doubleheader from the Wolf Pack, with a 5-1 triumph in the seven-inning nightcap.

With the regular-season title, also comes the No. 1 seed at next week’s NAPA Auto Parts WAC Baseball Tournament in Honolulu, Hawaii. If the Spartans complete the four-game weekend sweep of Nevada on Sunday, May 17, they will take on the Wolf Pack again in the tournament opener at 11:00 a.m. HST on Thursday, May 21. Should Nevada salvage Sunday’s finale, San Jose State would take on the host Rainbows of UH at 7:00 p.m. HST on Thursday night.

Two more victories puts San Jose State at 38-18 overall, 20 games over .500. The Spartans are now 14-7 in WAC play, having assured themselves of an above-.500 league mark for the second year in a row, with a 3-2 win over the Pack in the Friday night series opener.

Sunday’s final game of the set is slated for a 1:05 p.m. first pitch on Senior Day at Muni, following a ceremony honoring 13 senior members of the WAC champions, beginning at 12:45 p.m. Neither team has announced their probable starting pitcher for that one.

On Saturday, San Jose State played as if it really wanted to keep the announced crowd of 581 fans from melting on a particularly hot afternoon in the South Bay, as the first game took just two hours and eight minutes to complete, and following almost a 50-minute break, senior right-hander Tyler Heil and his Spartan teammates needed just 76 minutes to make it through the shortened second contest.

In the opener, the Spartans backed left-handed starter Max Peterson’s game effort with a three-run second offensively, with sophomore centerfielder Jason Martin, out of San Jose’s The Harker School, pulling a double down the left field line on the first pitch of his at-bat, with two outs, to bring in the final two runs.

Nevada answered right back with a two-run third, but Peterson and senior right-hander Anthony Vega kept them off the scoreboard over the course of the rest of the game. The Spartans tacked on an important insurance run in the ninth, as third baseman Corey Valine dropped a double down the right field line, was sacrificed over by fellow junior Karson Klauer, and came home on a sacrifice fly deep to center by freshman first baseman Danny Stienstra.

Vega was quick and effective in relief of Peterson, throwing just 26 pitches to retire all nine batters he faced, on four groundouts, a popout, a flyout, a foulout, a lineout and a strikeout. The outing netted him his eighth save this season and 11th of his Spartan career, both totals marking new program records for the second-year transfer out of Los Medanos College.

Peterson (7-1) went the first six frames for his seventh win of the year, allowing just the two runs on five hits and four walks, striking out six. Martin went 3-for-4 with his double and two RBI.

Left-handed starter Chris Garcia (4-6) took the loss for Nevada. Junior first baseman Shaun Kort’s two-run double down the left field line accounted for the only Wolf Pack runs in the game.

In addition to Heil on the mound, the nightcap was the Kyle Bellows Show, as the junior San Jose product, one of 15 semifinalists for the Brooks Wallace Award, honoring the nation’s top shortstop, did wonders with both the bat and the glove. He first put the Spartans on top with a towering home run, his team-leading eighth of the year, deep to left in the first inning with two outs and a 1-2 count against him.

Then during a four-run Spartan third that was more than enough for Heil on this day, Bellows poked a single through the left side with the bases full to make it a 2-0 game, ahead of a two-run single to right center by Valine, and scored himself on a sacrifice fly by Klauer.

In and around that offensive contribution, Bellows made several dazzling plays in the field in another error-free display by San Jose State.

Heil (4-1) threw only 80 pitches in his first collegiate complete game, going a career-high 7.0 innings and giving up just a solo home run to second baseman Joe Kohan in the fifth. That shot snapped a string of 11 straight retired batters for the senior right-hander and converted left-sided infielder. Heil did not have a walk or a strikeout, and gave up three hits in all.