I thought of this game in the same terms that LeBron James thought of when he considered participating in the NBA Slam Dunk Contest. There's little to gain if you win, and a lot to lose if you fail, so why bother?
Of course, the Bobcats did bother playing Division II West Virginia State. They've bothered for the majority of the past 22 seasons.
Nevertheless, as the game passed the fifth inning with Ohio still tied with the Yellow Jackets 1-1, I couldn't help but wondering why the Bobcats hadn't taken control of the game.
Of course, it's not like the Yellow Jackets are slouches. With West Virginia U recruiting mostly from out of state, the Yellow Jackets grab up most of the best players in West Virginia, coach Joe Carbone told me.
But still. West Virginia State is D-II. Ohio is D-I. The Bobcats are one of the only D-I teams the Yellow Jackets play, so it's not as if they regularly face D-I competition.
Yet with the game more than half over, you could hardly tell that one team played in the MAC and the other belonged to the WVIAC (West Virginia Intercollegiate Athletic Conference).
Through five innings, the number of hits were roughly equal. Freshman Shane Henkel, who'd pitched only two innings before Tuesday, got yanked by Carbone despite giving up just one (unearned) run in five innings.
Ohio started to look a lot better in the sixth inning, when it blew the game wide open thanks to the Yellow Jackets' pitchers' lack of control.
Todd Flemming, who had just been put in the game, struggled with his command from the moment he took the mound. He gave up a single to Ethan Newton, who advanced on a passed ball to Bryan Barnes. Then he hit Barnes, who got into scoring position on a wild pitch in the next at-bat.
An error and a few hits later, the Bobcats had put four runs on the board thanks to a sac fly by Kory Burkhardt and a three-RBI double by Dan Ward. Then WVS' new pitcher, Mike McClain, balked with runners on the corners, bringing home Ohio's fifth run of the inning.
I won't bother going into detail about the rest of the runs scored in the game, but maybe these stats can provide a good picture of what happened to the Yellow Jackets.
West Virginia State pitching: 9 walks, 2 wild pitches, 1 balk, 1 hit-by-pitch, 2 intentional walks, 168 total pitches thrown
Ohio pitching: 3 walks, 0 wild pitches, 0 balks, 0 hit-by-pitch, 0 intentional walks, 124 total pitches thrown
Final score: Ohio 12, West Virginia State 4
