Ohio looks to win at Dayton on Tuesday night.
Ohio’s first trip inside the Atlantic-10 conference will be far from Dayton’s first experience with a Mid-American Conference team.
The Bobcats (14-17, 4-5) will visit the Flyers on Tuesday in an attempt to continue momentum gained from sweeping a doubleheader on Sunday. Dayton is 3-5 in eight games against MAC competition this season, and 10-21 overall.
Ohio won its Sunday games 3-1 and 6-5.
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“I think collectively it was just about bringing incredible energy for 18 innings,” coach Rob Smith said on Sunday. “That’s what our guys did. We talked about it after Friday’s game, we had to bring some juice, and these guys brought it.”
The Bobcats aren’t just riding momentum from the doubleheader sweep, though. They also get to carry momentum through from last week’s 10-4 victory over Eastern Kentucky that served as a step toward turning around a season of midweek performances that had previously resulted in a 1-4 record.
One of the main things to watch entering Tuesday’s game could be how many pitchers Smith elects to utilize in an effort to come away with a win. The Bobcats began the season using pitchers for just an inning or two each in midweek games, but have slowly began to focus in on fewer pitchers with heavier workloads.
In its first midweek contest of the year, Ohio used eight pitchers to throw eight innings. The subsequent games have used six, seven, six, three and three pitchers, respectively. Tom Colletti and Jake Roehn combined for 4 2/3rd innings of shutout baseball in the team’s win over Eastern Kentucky.
The Bobcats will enter Dayton to face a Flyers team that may be playing the best baseball of their season to date. After an 0-8 start and slow progress since then, Dayton has won four of its last six, scoring at least eight runs in three of those victories.
The matchup of power hitters will be another enticing storyline when this game gets started. Both teams are led offensively by sluggers who are in the middle of career seasons in the Flyers’ Robbie Doring (.322/.413/.617, eight homers) and the Bobcats’ John Adryan (.311/.365/.659, 11 homers).
Ohio will also once again have eyes on the hot bat of Cody Gaertner, who has hit safely in 28 of his 31 games this season.
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