Again and again, a chain gang of green-clad players emerged from the third-base dugout, engulfing Ohio’s latest run in a sea of high fives and head pats.
With a combination of walks and line drives that somehow found the gaps in the infield, Ohio jumped to an 8-0 lead over Dayton by the end of the second inning.
Ohio kept hitting, coach Joe Carbone kept waiving runners home, and the Bobcats’ bench emptied over and over to greet the runners who crossed home plate.
Ohio (23-25) beat the Flyers 10-3 yesterday at Bob Wren Stadium, but the game was all but over after the Bobcats strung together consecutive four-run innings to start the game.
Starter Ben Trimbur held the lead with three scoreless innings from the mound ,and sophomore Seth Streich contributed three RBIs in the first two innings
to lead the team.
“We hit some balls hard,” Carbone said. “Dayton hit some balls hard but right at some people. Tonight, we found the holes. We caught a break, and it’s always good when you can jump out in front early.”
Junior Ethan Newton started the bottom of the first inning with a single. Garrett Black and Bryan Barnes walked, setting up Streich’s two-RBI single that snuck into the outfield between the first and second basemen.
With a fielder’s choice groundout from Taylor Emody and a triple from Jensen Painter, Ohio’s lead shot up to 4-0. Flyers starter Bryce Lahrman, who was pulled after hitting the next batter, was stuck with the loss.
“We kind of had the mentality before the game to hit the fastball,” said senior Adam Gecewich, who went 4-for-5 with two RBIs. “They just put them in there, and we just happened to hit them.”
While every ball the Bobcats hit seemed to sneak down the left-field line or into the gap at second base, the Flyers seemed unable to avoid Ohio’s infielders.
That, combined with a pair of ill-timed outfield errors, put Dayton (26-22) in a hole from which it would not recover.
“That’s just how baseball is,” Gecewich said. “Sometimes you’ll hit the ball on the ground four times and you’ll have four groundouts, sometimes you’ll hit it on the ground and have four hits.
“It’s just the way it happened tonight, and I like it. Let’s keep it that way.”
With one run in the fifth and two in the sixth, Dayton cut Ohio’s lead to five. But the Bobcats tacked on runs in the bottom of the sixth and the eighth to maintain a comfortable cushion.
“I thought they were more patient,” Carbone said of Ohio’s hitters. “We got ahead in counts, and when they had to commit to us, we did something with the pitches that we were sitting on. We didn’t foul them off, we didn’t swing and miss. We squared them up. That was the big thing.”
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