Ty Black stepped up to the plate in the bottom of the eighth inning — his team losing 4-1 — with two runners in scoring position and one out.
If Ohio's regular season was any indication of how the game would end, a comeback effort would fall short.
Ohio was just 1-19 when trailing after seven innings before Sunday's Mid-American Conference championship game against No. 3 seed Eastern Michigan at Sprenger Stadium. But on the ensuing 3-1 pitch, Black smacked a ball over the left field fence to tie the game.
Suddenly, an Ohio team that spent the first seven innings struggling to find the consistency that put them in the championship game to begin with, began buzzing like it had been all week. Ohio continued to dominate Eastern Michigan for three more eighth-inning runs to take a commanding 7-4 lead, and a win by the same margin to win the MAC Championship.
With one of the top bullpens in the conference led by senior Jake Rudnicki and redshirt junior Jake Roehn, Ohio quickly got the six outs it needed to win its second MAC title in three years.
The victory caps off what's been a tremendous past 10 days for the Bobcats, who finished the regular season by handing the eventual-No. 1 seed Kent State its first three-game conference series loss of the season. Then Ohio beat No. 4 seed Ball State in a 4-3 comeback victory in the first game of the MAC Tournament.
Ohio then proceeded to beat Kent State in its next two games of the double-elimination tournament to knock off the conference's top team. The first win came from yet another comeback victory in a game that ended around 2 a.m. as a result of the previous games being slowed by rain, while the second victory was made possible by a complete game from senior starting pitcher Tom Colletti, who pitched the first complete game from an Ohio pitcher this season.
With an undefeated postseason on the line and the risk of facing a do-or-die rematch game if it had lost in the first game to Eastern Michigan, Ohio continued to roll with the ball of momentum that proceeded to grow after each wild game to finish off the Eagles in a rare late-innings comeback victory.
The Bobcats now await to see where they will head next for the NCAA Regional Tournament held June 2-5. An announcement on the locations of the tournament will be made by the NCAA on Sunday night.
