For the second consecutive weekend, the Ohio baseball team will face one of the top teams in the Mid-American Conference as they play host to Ball State in their final home conference series of the year.
Ohio coach Joe Carbone said the formula for the team to have a shot at making it to the conference tournament is simple. They have to win more games than they lose.
The Bobcats (20-17-1 overall, 7-6-1 MAC) currently sit in fourth place in the East Division and eighth overall in the conference. The top two teams from each division and the next best two teams advance to the MAC tournament.
The coaching staff will use the same pitching rotation as they have used in recent weekend series.
Derek Witt (4-3) will take the mound Friday, followed by Anthony Gressick (2-1) on Saturday and John Angelicchi (3-0) will start the series finale.
Last weekend against Western Michigan, Gressick pitched a complete game, allowing one run on five hits. Witt allowed three runs on ten hits in eight innings of work, while Angelicchi pitched four innings, allowing three runs on five hits.
The Bobcats are coming off a series loss to Western Michigan, where the team gave up leads in both games that they lost. Ball State has won three of their last four MAC games, including a series win against Eastern Michigan last weekend.
Ohio leads the all-time series with 46 wins against 30 losses. Last year the Cardinals took two of three from the Bobcats.
Ball State is an outstanding team
Carbone said. They're like Western (Michigan). You can't make mistakes and beat them so we've got our work cut of for us with them.
Carbone said the team has to concentrate on all aspects of the game in order to win games this weekend.
Defensively we gave some games away he said. Offensively we have not made the most of scoring opportunities but we gave away some scoring opportunities and in the end
we gave away a lead when we should have had a bigger lead.
The Bobcats take the field tonight at 7 p.m. in the series opener. Saturday's game will also start at 7 p.m. with the finale beginning at 1 p.m. on Sunday at Bob Wren Stadium.
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Julie Goldberg
