VALDOSTA — After 46 games played and just three left to determine a season, Valdosta State baseball coach Tommy Thomas will have few words left to tell his team before this weekend’s series at West Florida.

“This is it, boys.”

Currently No. 6 in the Gulf South Conference’s East Division standings, the Blazers will need to win all three games against the Argonauts on Saturday and Sunday along with hoping several teams have losing weekends in order to make the playoffs.

“We are going to hope and pray that everything falls into place,” Thomas said.

In order for everything to fall into place, the Blazers must play fundamentally sound baseball.

Throughout the season, VSU (21-25, 7-1 1 in the GSC) has constantly run into problems involving the little things such as committing errors at the wrong time, walking too many batters and throwing wild pitches benefiting its opponents.

“We have felt that when we play mistake-free ball, I think we can play with a chance to win against any Division II team in the country,” Thomas said. “I sincerely mean that.”

Heading into conference play, the then 13-7 Blazers were known as a team that had strong defense and quality pitching.

“The irony of it all is we were that kind of team for the most part until conference started,” Thomas said.

The problems started for VSU in the very first inning of the very first conference game of the season against Lincoln Memorial. Going for a double play, the Blazers overthrew the intended receiver and put the ball into the dugout.

“I had not seen blatant errors like that and that went on the whole series and it never stopped,” Thomas said. “But all of a sudden, the defense just went south and we started making mistakes.”

In the Blazers’ first 20 games of the season, they committed 38 errors and in the 26 since the start of GSC play they have committed 52.

The reason for the defensive collapse come conference time is unknown to the VSU players, but they have worked on correcting it most the season.

“Maybe the lack of focus,” VSU infielder Alberto Castellon said. “I really don’t know. It just started happening, I don’t know why.”

The Blazers recently received a boost in confidence thanks to a three-game sweep against North Alabama.

The Blazers won the first two games 8-3 and 4-2 respectively and won an uncharacteristic 12-8 contest to close out the series.

“The double header was exactly like I’m hoping we play this weekend,” Thomas said. “Something had gotten into us after we gave up those seven runs. We did something that we don’t characteristically ever do — we scored 10 runs in one inning. What started that off was a bad defensive play by them.”

Along with defensive miscues, the Blazers have also had trouble hitting the ball.

From the outset of the season, VSU has not been known as a hitting team, especially in clutch situations — making basic fundamentals a must.

“We’ll never have a great hitting team,” Thomas said. “We know what we’ve got in our hitting, and we know what we’ve got in our pitching, and I think all of that has been fairly constant throughout the year.

“I think the biggest problem has been mistakes.”

Already having a less than stellar hitting game, the Blazers’ bats will be put under pressure more against West Florida, which owns a team ERA of 3.98.

“There’s no doubt in record books and in stat books West Florida has a better pitching staff than we do and slightly better hitters than we do,” Thomas said. “We know that because they have guys there that have been there for four years now that are pretty good.”

The Blazers will pitch Justin Lamb the first game, followed by Matt Marchant and Robert Petrucci.

“Right now we feel like Lamb is our most effective pitcher,” Thomas said. “Particularly because of the one-hitter (against Montevallo Saturday), and he does throw harder than anybody we’ve got because he throws up near 90.”

No matter who the Blazers throw at the Argonauts, they will be a tough team to face because of the need to win.

“I think they should be really worried,” Castellon said. “We have a lot to play for, and they’re in our way so we’re just going to go there and take them out.”