OHIO Baseball
Bobcats' streak spring broken
By Zach Swartz, Staff Writer
April 24, 2007 | 9:31 p.m.
While most Ohio students were out lying on the beach, the Ohio baseball team was out on the diamond looking to extend its pattern of victory after winning nine out of its last 10 games.
Spring break came and went, but not before the Bobcats dropped four of six on the road. The Bobcats (9-11, 0-3 MAC) took both games of a double-header at Oakland, Calif., on March 18 but fell to Wake Forest two days later in Winston-Salem, N.C., in their last game before entering conference play. From there, the team traveled to DeKalb, Ill., to face Mid-American Conference-rival Northern Illinois, only to be swept in three games.
After losing by just two runs in the first game of the series, Ohio blew a 4-2 lead in the eighth inning of the second game and ended up losing 5-4 in 10 innings. The Bobcats opened the third game with a 1-0 lead, but only managed to bring one more runner across the plate the rest of the game and fell 9-2.
The Bobcats came back home Tuesday looking for a win over Youngstown State (7-11), against whom the team is 17-5 all time. Nothing was easy for the green and white as they gave up five runs in the first inning and finished the game with a 14-7 loss.
As has been the case for most of the season, the Bobcat pitching was less than stellar.
“We weren’t locating well,” coach Joe Carbone said. “We were leaving the balls up. Matt [Schlarb] didn’t have good stuff today. [John] Angelicchi wasn’t sharp. This was his first outing of the year, so I can understand that. I thought Matt Smith was making some good pitches, but he couldn’t quite locate. He wasn’t missing by much, so I don’t know if the guys are tired from throwing mid-week or on the weekend. We had to get them out here instead of in the bullpen [and] get them in the game situation, so they’ll be getting more game condition. We’re trying to get the young guys out there as much as we can, and they just didn’t perform today.”
However, it wasn’t all bad for the Bobcats. Freshman Marc Krauss put together an impressive performance at the plate, slugging for his first three-home-run game of his baseball career while coming within 10 feet from knocking out a fourth dinger. It was Ohio’s first three-home-run game since Ben Crabtree accomplished the feat in 2003.
Despite Krauss’ performance, Carbone has not been impressed with his team’s overall execution at the plate as of late.
“We’ve got two guys up at the plate that are aggressive, [Matt] Stiffler and Krauss,” Carbone said. “The rest of the guys, we’re just battling, talking to, challenging. We’re not jumping out on the fastballs we can get on top of, so it’s been frustrating. We’re used to being a good hitting team. Ohio University teams have always been good, aggressive hitting teams, and we’ve got some seniors that are not being aggressive, and it’s been frustrating for me to watch that.”
With Toledo coming into Athens on Friday for its first MAC home game, the Bobcats will be looking to turn their play up a notch. They are 6-2 this season at Bob Wren Stadium and are not willing to leave this series with a sub-.500 conference record. Toledo, however, is also 0-3 in MAC play this season and will be looking to improve upon that.
“They’ll be ready to go,” Carbone said. “We have to be ready to go when they get here, so we need to up our baseball IQ level. It’s not very good right now…. We’re still doing stupid baseball things out there on the field. A lot of it is our seniors that should know better. We have to lead by example, and we’re not doing that. Baseball’s a funny game. You go on streaks when everything is falling in…. We can be a good college baseball team, but we’ve just got to get out there and get after them.”
The season is still young for the Bobcats, and they are looking to learn from their mistakes and take their season, which has been defined by up-and-down streaks, to a more consistent level.
“We just have to get back out and practice,” Krauss said. “We have to get back on the practice field Thursday and just work on everything we need to, just forget everything that has happened to us up to this point. It’s a new start for us, and we need these next three games.”
“It’s MAC weekend,” junior outfielder Matt Stiffler said. “We’ve got to be a little more excited than we were last weekend.”
Ohio’s series against conference rival Toledo is this Friday, Saturday and Sunday at Bob Wren Stadium. Friday and Saturday’s games are scheduled for 6 p.m. and Sunday’s for 1 p.m. Junior left-hander Matt Smith (2-2, 6.92 ERA) is likely to get the start for Ohio, and Kyle Rawlings (0-2, 5.40 ERA) is expected to take the mound for the Rockets.