It won’t count in the all-important Big Ten standings this time of year, but the Buckeye baseball team continued its momentum heading into the final weekend of the regular-season by beating Youngstown State 7-4 Tuesday night.
The Buckeyes found themselves in a 4-0 hole early on the road when the Penguins pushed across one run in the bottom of the 1st on an RBI single, and then added three more in the bottom of the 3rd inning on a three-run homer.
But then Ohio State struck back.
With the bases loaded in the top of the 5th inning, Connor Pohl took a 2-0 pitch over the wall for a game-tying grand slam.
Things then stayed scoreless for the next three innings, but Dominic Canzone changed that with a two-run bomb, his 15th of the year to give OSU some breathing room at 6-4. Canzone extended his bases reached streak to 48 games, just three shy of the record set by Nick Swisher in 2002.
Canzone then struck again with a sacrifice fly in the top of the ninth for the final 7-4 margin.
Reliever Mitch Milheim got his first win of the season in 2.2 innings of work to improve to 1-1. The Buckeyes moved their overall record to 28-24 and now must focus on a three-game series at Purdue this weekend. They sit just 1/2 game back of Rutgers for the eighth and final spot of the Big Ten Baseball Tournament, and just one game back of seventh place Northwestern.
