BEAUMONT — On a day when Jake Nash and Stijn van der Meer each belted three-run homers, Reid Russell’s two-run blast may have been more significant.

It wasn’t just because his shot over center field erased a first-inning 1-0 hole for Lamar against Central Arkansas on Sunday. It was also because his streak of games with a home run extended to five.

“It’s kind of hard to believe, honestly, but it’s not doing anything special,” Russell said. “It’s just going up there with the same approach every time and getting a good pitch to hit and squaring it up.”

The junior transfer hit 4 of 9 and drive in eight runs during the recent three-game home sweep of UCA, which ended Sunday with a 9-2 win. On Monday Russell was awarded a Louisville Slugger National Player of the Week honor as well as the Southland Conference Hitter of the Week accolade.

Russell now has eight home runs on the year, two behind national co-leaders Jake Burger of Missouri State and Heath Quinn of Samford, and is three games away from matching the NCAA record of eight straight with a homer, shared by Andy Bruce of Georgia Tech (March 1991) and Ryan Jackson of Duke (March-April 1994). Burger, who homered four times in a five-game span during the week, and Russell were among eight players receiving the Louisville Slugger honor.

“It’s pretty cool,” Russell said. “A lot of hard work went into that. Thanks to my coaches and teammates for having my back throughout the year.”

Russell was awarded for his performance the entire previous week, which began with a 2-for-4, three-RBI effort in a 4-3 home loss to Houston. His home run streak began with a solo shot March 13 at Northwestern State and also includes an opposite-field boom in Friday’s series opener with UCA.

“The last week for him has been incredible,” 16^th-year Lamar hitting coach Scott Hatten said. “He’s turning himself into a complete hitter to where earlier in the year, he was mostly pulling baseballs. But now, he’s able to drive balls out of center field, out of right field. He had two home runs this week that were right-center field. One was into a 20-mph wind.”

Hatten added Lamar hadn’t had a right-hander with power to hit to right field “in a long time,” so Russell’s arrival has been right on time.

The Cards found a gem in the 6-foot-3 left fielder from Longview who won back-to-back national championships at Tyler Junior College. He was named national player of the week twice and homered eight times and drove in 45 runs as a sophomore.

Lamar (13-7, 4-2 Southland) scored 35 runs on 37 hits against UCA after combining for 21 runs in its previous seven games, three of which the Cards won. Before last Tuesday’s Houston game, head coach Jim Gilligan characterized the Cards as a team of sluggers, adding they needed to find other ways to manufacture runs.

Russell helped Lamar respond at the plate and raised his batting average by .012 to .361 (26 for 72) in the past three games. Only catcher Bryndan Arredondo is batting better on the team at .400.

But Russell, whose 21 RBI lead the Cards, didn’t change a thing in his approach at the plate.

“A lot of times, if you’re in a slump or whatever you want to call it, it’s not anything different,” he said. “Same mindset, same approach. You just keep trying to square up the ball, and it’s going to fall eventually. A lot of times, we were hitting the ball hard, just right to people, and we couldn’t get the runs we needed.”

On Sunday Jayson McKinley (1-0) backed up the offense by throwing a seven-inning dandy, striking out 10, scattering six hits and allowing two earned runs. Enrique Oquendo struck out five of the minimum six batters he faced in the final two innings.

It might be hard to believe that for all his hitting prowess, Russell regularly batted sixth in the lineup. But he’s been in the clean-up spot the past two games.

And he’s homering where Hatten says the wind blows into Vincent-Beck Stadium 95 percent of the time.

“The thing about our team, especially 1 through 9 in the lineup, everybody can hit,” Hatten said. “What we’ve been doing so good is that the guys who are swinging are real hot, and we’ve got guys in the lineup who are not swinging it, so right now, the guys are picking them up. …

“So, there’s really no weaknesses from 1 through 9 in our lineup, which is great to have. So, there are no dead innings. Every inning, we have a chance to score runs.”

Lamar returns to action with a three-game home set starting Thursday at New Orleans and continues with road game at Texas on March 29.