Home sweet for Rebels

Steve Carp

Monday, March 25, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.

Home was pretty good to the UNLV baseball team the past month or so, but the Rebels are ready to get out of town for a few days.

Of course, there might be more appealing stops than Fullerton, Calif. But at least Fred Dallimore's team has some momentum after sweeping San Jose State over the weekend at Wilson Stadium, making its Big West record 3-0 and closing out a marathon 32-game homestand at 26-6.

The Rebels, 27-8 overall, will face No. 1-ranked Cal State Fullerton Friday through Sunday at Titan Field. Fullerton opened conference play with a three-game sweep of Pacific earlier this month.

Sunday's 4-3 win for UNLV wasn't the slugfest the first two days had been when the 24th-ranked Rebels scored 35 runs and banged out 43 hits. But Dallimore said a lot of good came out of it, despite his team managing just eight hits.

"You need to play games like this," he said. "Blowouts aren't any fun. And to win a game like this, let me tell you, that's a big one for us. We can now go to Fullerton with some confidence and we can go there on a positive note."

Paul Tanner's two-out single to right-center field in the bottom of the ninth inning scored Chris Adolph from second with the game-winning run. UNLV had rallied from an early 2-0 deficit to lead 3-2 after six, only to have the Spartans (16-15, 0-3 Big West) tie it in the top of the ninth.

"I was looking for a fastball and I just wanted to hit it hard," Tanner said of the 2-0 pitch from reliever Israel Long (3-2). "We may have been too aggressive today trying to hit their left-hander (Jason Davis) but we were able to pull it out and that's what counts. We didn't want to go to Fullerton on a downer."

UNLV used some station-to-station baseball to tie it in the fifth as consecutive bunt singles from Adolph and Stacy Kleiner set up Sean Campbell's two-run single to right.

"Our finesse game was good today," Dallimore said. "We didn't hit well, but we moved our guys around and we executed."

Dallimore said the key for UNLV at Fullerton will be playing good defense and getting good pitching.

"We won today (Sunday) because they made two mistakes and we didn't make any," he said of two SJSU errors.

"If we can play well and get six or seven good innings from our starters, we can play with them (Fullerton). We've had success at their place in the past."