Ohio State Takes Series at Nebraska with 7-4 Win

LINCOLN, Neb. – The Ohio State baseball team held on to beat Nebraska Sunday afternoon at Haymarket Park, 7-4. The Buckeyes take two of three from the Huskers and improve to 7-5 in the Big Ten and 23-11 overall.

 

Brian King went 7.0 strong innings for the Buckeyes to pick up the win and improve to 5-4. King allowed no runs on three hits and two walks while striking out three.

 

After a scoreless first inning, the Buckeyes took a 1-0 lead in the top of the second off of Nebraska starting pitcher Tyler King. Jacob Bosiokovic led off with a single and advanced to second on a sacrifice bunt by Greg Solomon. After Troy Kuhn walked, Tim Wetzel hit a ground ball to second base but Nebraska shortstop Wes Erdington made a throwing error attempting to turn the double play and Bosiokovic came into score.

 

Ryan Cypret reached first to lead off the top of the third after being hit by a pitch and would come around to score and give the Buckeyes a 2-0 advantage following a looping base hit to center by Kirby Pellant and an RBI single to left field by Patrick Porter.

 

Ohio State added another in the fifth after Cypret sent a double down the left-field line and Pellant followed with an RBI single to make it 3-0.

 

The Buckeyes tacked on four more in the top of the eighth to go up 7-0. After a double by Porter, Bosiokovic knocked him home with a base hit to go up by four runs. A fly out by Solomon made it two outs for the Buckeyes but they strung together four-consecutive singles off the bats of Kuhn, Wetzel, Brad Hallberg and Joe Ciamacco to take the seven-run lead.

 

After replacing King in the eighth, Greg Greve ran into trouble and was replaced after giving up a run and putting runners on the corners with no outs by Ryan Riga. Riga struck out Rich Sanguinetti for the first out and got Pat Kelly to ground into a 5-4-3 double play to get out of the inning with a 7-1 lead still intact.

 

Riga then ran into trouble in the bottom of the ninth. After loading the bases, he gave up two-consecutive RBI singles before giving way to Trace Dempsey. Dempsey got Tanner Lubach to line out to Cypret at second before Austin Darby hit a pinch-hit sacrifice fly to left and make the score 7-4. Sanguinetti then drew a walk to put the tying run at first base but Dempsey got Kelly to pop out to Hallberg in foul territory to shut the door on the Huskers. Dempsey picked up the save, his 11th of the season.