Sports
Buckeyes Hand Bobcats Baseball Fifth Straight Loss
By: Nick Ursini
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For the first time since the 2014 season The Ohio Bobcats (11-12) have dropped five straight games after they fell 3-0 to the Ohio State Buckeyes (10-14) Tuesday night.
The game was scoreless until the Buckeyes broke the tie in the fourth inning.
Jacob Barnwell led off the inning with a walk. He then advanced to second on a groundout and stole third. A bad throw from Nick Bredeson sent Barnwell home.
For most of the game Ohio was outhitting Ohio State, but their timely hitting which has haunted them all season long let them down once again when they got good pitching.
Cory Blessing got the start for Ohio and finished with three innings pitched, allowing just one hit and striking out three batters.
Ohio pitched Blessing, Nick Kamrada, Kenny Ogg, Matt Mikolajczak, Tom Colletti, Jake Rudnicki and Jake Roehn to continue to get the pitchers work before Mid-American play opens up.
The Buckeyes put the game out of reach with two runs in the bottom of the seventh inning. Rudnicki came in and let up a leadoff single to Dominic Canzone. Noah West was drilled by a pitch and Tre Gantt walked to load the bases with no outs. Jacob Barnwell singled right back up the middle, scoring Canzone and West.
The best chance Ohio got to cross the plate came in the eighth inning. Shortstop Tyler Finkler laced a single to left center and Connor McMann followed Finkler with a single to right field.
Ohio’s runners couldn’t advance from there.. Devon Garcia and Bredeson struck out looking and Rudy Rott lined out to right field to end the threat.
Ohio only reached second base twice on the night.
Ohio coach Rob Smith understands the difficulty his offense is facing and is hoping their slump snaps as Mid-American Conference play begins this weekend.
“You just have to keep working to try and get better,” he said. “That’s really the only thing you can do at this point. Hitters are trying to work it out. We have conference play opening this weekend, hopefully, they can hit the reset button, start from scratch and get it going.”
The Bobcats travel to Muncie, Ind. to take on the Ball State Cardinals (11-14) in their first Mid-American Conference series of the year .
First pitch is set for 3 p.m. on Friday.