YSU hopes to be surprise in Horizon League event

The No. 6 seeded Penguins open against No. 3 UW-Milwaukee Wednesday.

SPECIAL TO THE VINDICATOR

The sixth-seeded Youngstown State baseball team will play third-seeded UW-Milwaukee in the opening round of the Horizon League Tournament in Chicago Wednesday at 4 p.m.

YSU enters the tournament coming off an up and down regular season in which it endured some growing pains with many new players. The Penguins finished 17-35 overall and 9-21 in the Horizon League, but coach Mike Florak has always stressed the importance of preparing for the tournament.

“[The winner] is going to be whoever plays the best this week,” Florak said. “The tournament is always full of surprises, and we’re hoping to be one of them.”

Split in regular season

The Penguins and Milwaukee split six regular-season meetings, including a split of a four-game set two weeks ago at Eastwood Field.

The Panthers split a four-game series with Butler over the weekend, but won 13 of their 18 games in May. Over that stretch, the Panthers are batting .355 as a team.

“They’re going to be hard-nosed just like all Milwaukee teams have been in the past,” Florak said. “They’re always tough, and they always swing the bats well. We’re going to have to play our best to come out on top.”

Game one starter Lucas Engle pitched well in both outings against the Panthers this season, losing 3-0 in Milwaukee April 15 and getting a no-decision at home earlier this month. In the first meeting he allowed two earned runs on eight hits in eight innings, but he lost the duel as Robert Michalkiewicz threw a nine-hit shutout. Engle also allowed three runs in 5 2/3 innings May 11 against the Panthers.

“Lucas has been pitching really well over the past month,” Florak said. “With him on the mound we feel like we can beat anybody.”

Michalkiewicz, the likely starter Wednesday for Milwaukee, was 1-0 with a 1.56 ERA against YSU this season. He finished the regular season 5-4 with a 3.94 ERA, and all five of those wins came in league games.

“Michalkiewicz is a quality Division I pitcher” Florak said. “He throws a lot of strikes, and he always seems to get the big pitch when he needs it. Everyone is going to have to have good at-bats for us to have success against him.”

Koehnlein leads offense

The Penguins have six players batting above .300 with the league’s top hitter, John Koehnlein, leading the way with a .425 average. Koehnlein, who has already broken the YSU’s single-season hits record by 17, extended his hitting streak to a school-record 25 games over the weekend at Cleveland State. He has hit safely in 48 of the team’s 52 games this season, and he is the only player to appear in every game.

If YSU wins Wednesday it will play top-seed and host UIC Thursday at 8 p.m. If the Penguins lose in the first round, they will play the loser of the Cleveland State-Butler game in an elimination round Thursday at noon. Wright State, last season’s tournament champion, is the No. 2 seed.

Free live video webcasts of all games will be shown on the Horizon League Network through www.horizonleague.org. The site also has links to CSTV’s Gametracker for games in progress, along with complete summaries and box scores as contests are completed.