Entering Friday night's matchup with the TCU Horned Frogs, the BYU baseball team desperately needed a win, as the Cougars had dropped 12 of their past 15 games.

Sure enough.

For the second consecutive night the BYU pitching fell victim to the powerful TCU offensive lineup as the Horned Frogs defeated the Cougars 13-4.

Jake Wortham opened the night for the Cougars on the mound and after a successful first inning in which he saw only four TCU hitters, his offense provided a cushion of three runs in the bottom half of the first inning.

Sean McNaughton doubled in the right field gap before Dan Vargas ripped a single to score him. Big man Kasey Ko smacked a double to the wall in right field to score Vargas and Steve Parker and give the Cougars the early 3-0 lead.

"Well we talked about last night, shortening the game into nine individual games." BYU coach Vance Law said. "We held them scoreless in the first inning, came back and took the lead."

Wortham returned to the mound in the visitor's half of the second and saw all nine batters as the Horned Frogs batted through the order and touched Wortham up for six runs to take the lead back at 6-3.

Wortham's control was an issue in the second inning as he walked the first batter and then followed that up by hitting the second batter of the inning on an 0-2 count. TCU rattled off three consecutive hits before Chris Ellington roped a two-run double to cap off the Horned Frogs offensive outburst.

"Jake hasn't been as sharp. His last couple starts he's been up and away." Law said. "It seemed like all night he was pitching behind and when you do that the hitters can just sit on something, they don2/3t have to be defensive at the plate, they are very aggressive and can be patient and get a ball they can hit when you are always hitting in a hitters count."

After the three run first inning the Cougar bats were silenced by TCU starter Sean Hoelshcer, who entered the night with a 3.13 ERA and went eight innings to improve his record to 4-2 in the winning effort.

The Horned Frogs recorded their seventh run of the night after a J.T. Musso throwing error on a double steal attempt that led to Clint Arnold scoring from second.

Wortham entered the fifth inning allowing no earned runs since the second inning TCU explosion and after making light work of the first two batters of the fifth inning, Bryan Kervin singled to the right side. Wortham looked like he would be able to get out of the inning without any damage being done, but after a 3-2 pitch to Matt Vern was crushed over the left field wall for a two-run dinger that put the Horned Frogs up 9-4 and ended the night for Wortham, who dropped to a 2-3 record on the year with the loss.

After getting the early lead for Wortham the BYU offense spend the rest of the night playing catch up and just couldn't keep scoring runs at the speed of the Horned Frogs.

"They took the wind out of our sails when they scored six after we scored three." Law said. "It is kind of devastating when you jump out to a lead and can't post a zero the next half inning."

Middle reliever Sean Amerson entered the game in the fifth inning and held TCU to only one run, but Amerson left in the seventh inning with the bases loaded and Arnold greeted Cougar pitcher Michael Ward with a bases clearing double to put the Horned Frogs up 13-4.

The Cougars look to avoid the series sweep when they host the Horned Frogs for the final game of the series today at 1 p.m. at Miller Field.

"We've got to come out tomorrow and get a win in this series." Law added. "We need to try to get these guys some confidence, they are very down right now."