Ohio had a poor start to the season, winning one of its first nine games to start the 2026 season under new head coach Andrew See. This group has struggled early due to not doing the little things right and not finishing games that they hold a lead in, and Ohio’s record reflects that.
“It just seems when the game gets a little bit closer towards the middle to the end, we're not as mentally tough as we need to be,” See said. "In this program, we have that standard. So I think we can improve on that.”
The pitching unit has struggled to start the season, posting a 9.12 ERA in 74 innings after Friday’s action, but one bright spot was on the mound against Dayton in sophomore right-handed pitcher Luke Bryant. He was coming off a start where he allowed only 1 run in four innings of work.
Bryant came out strong again Friday, but a couple of critical Ohio errors ended his day early, despite a career-high total for innings thrown in a game at 4.2. Ohio struggled with allowing walks, but the big issue came on defense, where the Bobcats surrendered a pair of runners on the afternoon due to dropping routine popups and putting Bryant in bad situations that pushed his pitch count.
“The story of the game is just, we gave them too many outs for some of the pop-ups we didn't catch, and then we had seven walks, and five of them were four-pitch walks, and we are just not competitive in those situations,” See said.
Bryant exited in the fifth inning after allowing four runs to come across the plate behind a three-run homer, but the runners got into place after a hit and a walk. Something that has been a big issue for the Bobcats this year has been commanding these controllable situations, such as walks and errors, and these mistakes will remain costly if not reigned in soon.
“A lot of stuff that's going on now is controllable, but we have got to make sure that we have some gut checks and be more competitive in the strike zone in those situations, so the innings don't escalate,” See said.
Bryant was chased from the game as See and his staff let the starter go a few hitters too far, and his fatigue got the better of him. These decisions are always tough on head coaches, but it is especially hard after a situation like this, when the extension for your starter brings in what becomes the winning runs for the opponent.
“He just got tired there a little bit, See said. “I was trying to get him through the fifth, and I thought he had a quality start for us, for sure. (We) probably left him in one or two batters too late, (we) left him in there to try to see if he can get off the field and build off it.”
Ohio fell behind the rest of the way with its best chance to battle back being in the seventh, where they did score a couple to cut into the lead, but it was not enough as the team squandered at-bats throughout the game, which included six strikeouts looking out of the Bobcats 10 total.
The late-game situations saw Ohio threaten to tie but not convert, and that was a result of poor situational hitting, which helped put the team away behind another instance of poor execution in this game, as the Bobcats will need to regroup as they search for a way back into the win column.
“We just need to have some better at-bats with third less than two outs, right there,” See said.
