Ohio baseball starts its 2016 season against UNC Asheville Friday.
Second baseman Ty Black fielded the routine chopper and flipped it to shortstop Garret Black for the game’s final out. The team piled up on the mound seconds later, yelling and smiling, as somebody dumped a Powerade cooler filled with ice water over them.
Coming off an 11-40 season in 2014, Ohio was the 2015 Mid-American Conference Champion for the first time in nearly a decade.
Now that the rings have been handed out and the seniors have graduated, the 2016 season presents a new opportunity for the Bobcats. A team with a fresh perspective as a defending champion instead of a conference bottom-dweller.
“We don’t have to defend our title, we get to defend our title,” coach Rob Smith said. “There’s a different mindset with that.”
The Bobcats’ 2014 season was dreadful. They finished second-to-last in the MAC and lost 12-straight games at one point.
To most MAC teams, Ohio’s 2015 championship turnaround was a complete surprise.
“We were sort of picked at the bottom of everything,” third baseman John Adryan said. “This year, people are more gunning for us, you could say.”
Indeed, there’s no hiding Ohio anymore. Winning a MAC championship has that effect.
Sure, Ohio’s all-time hits leader Jake Madsen is gone, as well as 2015 MAC Pitcher of the Year Logan Cozart and other pieces, but there are still plenty of returners with the conference title fresh in their minds.
The Bobcats have 21 upperclassmen on their roster and, aside from a few transfers, nearly all of them were part of Ohio’s transformation.
“Look, I’ve been there, I’ve done this,” senior pitcher Connor Sitz said when asked about his message to incoming players. “I got to experience the bad and I got to experience the good.”
Sitz, who has the most career starts on the pitching staff, played a crucial role in last season’s MAC title with a 7-2 record and a no-hitter in the conference tournament.
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He said the older players do a great job conveying the team’s championship-like feel.
“I think you need to believe it for it to happen,” Sitz said. “A few years ago, it was a little bit in doubt.”
Though Ohio believed it would be better in 2015 after back-to-back losing seasons, the team needed a 6-0 start to gain confidence and succeed.
Now, the Bobcats see what it’s like to reach their goals. And they want reach those goals again just as badly.
“I want to get another ring, that’d be nice,” Sitz said. “Two rough years and two even years would even out, so that would be pretty cool.”
Ohio opens on the road Friday at 3 p.m. against UNC Asheville, the same team it swept in three games to start last season.
The difference is, the Bobcats entered 2015 picked to finish 11th in the MAC. This year, they're projected to finish second in their division.
The league’s confidence in the Bobcats is starting to catch up with how they've felt about themselves for more than a year now.
“I think that’s good because we don’t have to get off to a 6-0 start to validate that we’re a better team,” Smith said. “Regardless of how we get out of the gates … our ultimate goal is to win that MAC tournament again.”
OhioBobcatTV produced a video to document the Bobcats’ conference tournament run last season, proof that no team can take away their accomplishment.
Adryan said he loves watching the video and being reminded of that championship feeling. But, as a senior, he knows how to put it all in perspective.
“It’s just good to reminisce about it,” he said. “But I try not to stay too far in the past because the season is (upcoming) so we’re just going to get the first game going and not look back.”
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