Bobcats submit final application for tournament

by Anthony Castrovince
Staff Writer

The Ohio baseball team has come a long way in the past two weeks, but they will have to go a long way to cap a dramatic run to get to the Mid-American Conference Tournament.

Following Wednesday's 17-16 loss at Duquesne, the Bobcats (26-22 overall, 13-10 MAC) returned to Athens late that night, picked up some clean uniforms and departed for Northern Illinois early yesterday morning.

The team's four-game series this weekend with the Huskies will do more than add frequent bus mileage to its résumé. It also will serve as an official application for the postseason.

"Illinois seems like it's at the other end of the world," Ohio coach Joe Carbone said, only two hours into the nine-hour drive. "But we're just going to go out there and play."

Ohio is sixth in line for the tournament, which has six spots after sweeping Marshall last weekend.

Alas, there are four games to play and, depending on the weekend actions of their peers in the bottleneck conference, the Bobcats could need a four-game sweep to stay alive. Carbone, however, said the team will take this series on a day-to-day basis.

"We're not smart enough to think more than one game at a time," he said. "We're playing for something here in the last weekend, and that's what it's all about."

Northern Illinois (27-24, 9-14) is also hanging off the proverbial cliff, but the Huskies situation is a bit more unstable. Like the Bobcats, the Huskies struggled in the early conference schedule, but pulled it together last week with a four-game sweep of Buffalo.

The recipe for Northern Illinois' advancement to the tournament is complicated. The team needs to sweep the Bobcats and then hope Marshall can sweep Eastern Michigan and Ball State can take four games from Western Michigan. The final ingredient would consist of a four-game split between Toledo and Central Michigan.

The possibility of the planets aligning perfectly for the Huskies is unlikely, but coach Dave Schrage said his team has other goals in mind.

"We just want to finish strong," he said. "We're trying to achieve two goals: a winning season, which we've only had one of in the last 17 years, and we're also two wins away from our school record for wins. If we have some unbelievable chance to get into the tournament, I think that is very far fetched."

If the Huskies wish to pull off the sweep, they will need another stellar pitching performance from Brad Gavelek, who is 6-5 with a 6.05 earned run average. In his last trip to the hill against the Bulls, Gavelek struck out 12 and allowed just three hits in a complete game shutout to give his team the sweep and the 1,000th victory in the program's history.

Outfielder Noel Danielson is the team's force to be reckoned with at the plate and on the basepaths. He is batting .385 with 37 RBIs and a team-high 21 stolen bases.

"We're going to have to keep Danielson off the bases," Carbone said. "We have to pitch carefully to him."

Carbone will utilize the same pitching rotation employed in the Marshall series: Denny McGee (9-2) today, Chuck Lombardy (3-2) and Walt Novosel (2-6) in Saturday's doubleheader and Marc Cornell (3-2) in Sunday's finale.

Carbone said the pitching staff will settle the team's fate.

"Momentum is always who's pitching," he said. "If we get good pitching, we'll get good momentum."

The Bobcats and Huskies take the field at 3 p.m. today, and 1 p.m. Saturday and Sunday at Ralph McKinzie Field in DeKalb, Ill.