The Bobcats beat the Thundering Herd for their first home victory at The Wren.
Marshall pitcher Josh King stepped off the mound to regain his focus.
After leading 8-5, the Thundering Herd allowed the Bobcats to slowly claw their way back into the game — one that seemed decided after establishing the three-run lead.
But now there were two outs, bases loaded and the score was tied.
Two pitches later, there was a crack, silence from the fans and then a loud bang off the left-center wall.
“When it got to two strikes and he threw me an off-speed … I was a little off balance,” senior leftfielder Tyler Well said. “I wasn’t sure if he was coming back with one, but I was thinking it’d be a fastball away. He happened to throw me one right down the middle.”
Wells had smashed a bases-clearing, three-run triple to give the Bobcats an 11-8 lead, the final score.
“I was really happy when the centerfielder didn’t catch it because from where I was, it looked pretty close,” Wells said. “It was pretty good to get three runs out of it and get a win.”
What started as an Ohio 3-0 lead, followed by a Marshall five-run swing in part from a grand slam, the Bobcats rewrote the storyline once again, and left The Wren with their first home win this season at the ballpark.
But it wasn’t always that easy.
After going down three, a loss seemed imminent until two members of the Marshall team were ejected before the Bobcats regained the poise they had during the first two innings.
Marshall’s Kolin Stanley was thrown out in the fifth inning after throwing a pitch behind junior third baseman John Adryan, prompting an immediate rejection from the umpire.
When Marshall’s coach Jeff Waggoner came out and argued the decision for nearly five minutes, he was ejected as well.
“In the dugout, our mindset was, we were going to win this game no matter what it took,” Wells said. “It’s just huge going into the weekend. We’ve had three losses in a row now, so this win against rival Marshall is huge going into this weekend.”
For as dramatic as the eighth inning rally was, coach Rob Smith said it wasn’t the first time his team has had to step up late.
“The quality start, we’ve struggled to get that,” Smith said. “We’ve looked at it. We’ve played 21, 22 games and I think we’ve had nine quality starts … if we can just get that, knowing the quality we have on the back end, we’ll have a great chance to win a ton of games.”
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