search
Donate

Sports

(Carter Eckl/WOUB)

Ohio Baseball begins the Road to Omaha and CWS


Posted on:

< < Back to

The Ohio Baseball team will be heading to Champaign, Illinois to take on the Illinois Fighting Illini in the first round of the College World Series regionals. The ‘Cats have faced Illinois before in the College World Series but fall on the wrong end of a 1-3 all-time record against the orange and blue. But, all four of those games were over 60 years ago.

This is an Illinois team that has played Mid-American Conference opponents already this season. Kent State and Ball State both played two games a piece against Illinois and both series were split one-all. The ‘Cats took two out of three from the Golden Flashes in the middle of April and defeated the Cardinals in the MAC Championship to clinch their spot in the College World Series. The numbers may not be in the ‘Cats favor but, when it comes to games against MAC opponents, Ohio does have the edge.

Illinois makes its name known on their starting pitching. The staff as a whole has a team ERA of 2.46 with the starters owning a majority of those innings pitched. There was at least one Illinois starting pitcher named to each of the All Big-10 first, second, and third teams at the end of the year. The Fighting Illini also have a specialty relief pitcher with very similar numbers to Ohio’s Logan Cozart. Tyler Jay has pitched over 56 innings this season and allowed just four earned runs in the process, netting him an ERA of 0.64. Cozart and Jay also both had 13 saves on the season. That doesn’t include Illinois’ everyday players, four of which were awarded All-Big 10 first team honors.

Every team in the tournament is now two losses away from having their season come to an end. Only one of the four teams in each regional will advance to the Super Regionals. If Ohio can keep their collective foot on the gas, anything can happen in one, nine inning game of baseball.

The ‘Cats Road to Omaha begins at 8pm ET Friday May, 29th where the game will be broadcasted live on ESPN3.com. The other half of the regional pins the two-seed Notre Dame Fighting Irish up against Wright State. The winners and losers from each respective match-up will face each other in the following game of the regional.