WSU to open Mountain West tournament with quarterfinal matchup against Air Force

May 21-PULLMAN - When he reflects back on this Washington State baseball season, about the way the Cougars made history and have their eyes set on a whole lot more , Nathan Choate likes to highlight a couple games.

There's WSU's season-opening win over SEC power Alabama. There's the Cougars' up-and-down win over UNLV. There's their narrow win over San Jose State, also on the road. Then, to wrap up the regular season, WSU took on Air Force in Colorado Springs, where no opponent had won this spring. The Cougars and Falcons squared off for three games.

"And we won two of them," Choate said.

That's the good news for WSU, which opens the Mountain West Conference Tournament at 6:05 p.m. Friday night with a matchup against third-seeded Air Force. It's the first postseason appearance in 16 years for the Cougars, the No. 2 seed in the tournament, a double-elimination style format set for Mesa, Arizona.

To knock off the Falcons and advance to Saturday's semifinals, the Cougars will have to play more like the way they did to win the regular-season series' first two games. In those contests, WSU raced to early leads and cruised to victories, including a seven-inning mercy-rule triumph in the second game. First baseman Ryan Skjonsby (all-conference second team) and left fielder Dustin Robinson combined for seven RBIs on four hits in that one.

It's likely that on Friday, WSU will give the starting pitching nod to lefty ace Nick Lewis, who captured Mountain West Pitcher of the Year honors on Thursday. Then the Cougars are expected to start their next two weekend pitchers, Griffin Smith (all-conference second team) and Luke Myers, the latter of whom was dinged for four earned runs in the Cougars' series-closing loss to the Falcons earlier this month.

For WSU, what went wrong in that loss? The Cougars headed into the ninth inning with a 9-5 lead, which they trusted reliever August Richie to defend. Instead, Richie yielded four runs before getting pulled for Brock Blatter, who issued an intentional walk before allowing a walk-off single.

"Sometimes you make a decision and the guy gets a guy out, sometimes you walk a guy and it doesn't work out," Choate said. "So, like I said, I think we've been really competitive. And even in our last three conference losses, you know, they're 5-4, 5-4, 4-3. So as much as people want to talk about the bullpen, if you're losing, 5-4, 4-3, those aren't pitching issues. Those are just a play here or there."

To advance to their first NCAA Tournament since 2010, which was also the last time they made the postseason in any way (the Pac-12 did not have a conference tournament until 2022), the Cougars will have to make more than a play here or there. With a win over Air Force, WSU would also have to knock off top-seeded San Diego State, which won the team's regular-season series by a 2-1 margin in March. First-year Aztec coach Kevin Vance was named the conference's coach of the year, and junior Jake Jackson took home conference player of the year honors.

Do the Cougs have the horses to get to that matchup? They'll need to produce the way they did earlier in the regular season. In a second win over Air Force, a 14-4 mauling, Skjonsby and Robinson may have driven in a combined seven runs - but the Cougars also got a two-RBI showing from veteran outfielder Max Hartman and three more hits from second baseman Gavin Roy, a second-team all-conference pick.

In their loss to the Falcons, the Cougars swung the bats in much the same way. They were undone by their bullpen, which has struggled in spots this season, especially in mid-week games.

Which version of WSU will show up to Sloan Park on Friday evening? That much has yet to be written, but ask around the team and you quickly learn that the Cougars take pride in this: For as historic a season that they've engineered, parlaying a string of forgettable years into a memorable one, they're doing their best to avoid looking ahead.

"It's far from over, so we're still just trying to go out there and win baseball games," Lewis said in an interview last week. "Who knows what's gonna happen? We have no idea when our season is gonna end, but at this point in time, we're really just focused on the next game. So it's not really something that we try to get caught up in too much, because the job's not finished."

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This story was originally published May 21, 2026 at 7:14 PM.