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YSU suffers sweep by Wright St.
By Greg Gulas
NILES
A team has its work cut out for it when playing on the road, knowing it might take a near flawless effort to produce a victory.
Wright State was nearly flawless this weekend at Eastwood Field.
Ryan Ashe had three hits and three RBIs on Saturday, including an inside-the-park home run as the Raiders defeated YSU, 8-3 on senior day in the regular-season home finale and a three-game Horizon League sweep of the Penguins.
“They’re at the top of the league standings for a reason and it all starts at the top with their coach, Rob Cooper,” said YSU mentor Rich Pasquale.
“Their hitting approach is what we are trying to accomplish. They make adjustments with two outs and it’s just tough trying to figure them out. But we will.
“They can play small ball or go deep; it really doesn’t matter. That being said, they’re one of the best two-out hitting teams in the nation for that very reason,” Pasquale said.
Of the 35 runs manufactured by the Raiders in their three-game sweep of the Penguins, 20 came with two outs in the inning, including the first four in Saturday’s game.
“Our goal is to be the best two-out hitting team in the country,” said Cooper. “We feel that as long as there is a pitch left in the count, we can still make something happen.”
YSU took a 1-0 lead in the second inning on a run-scoring single by catcher Anthony Porter.
The Raiders tied it at 1 in the third when Casey McGrew’s triple scored Aaron Fields.
Wright State’s Garrett Gray led off the fourth with his team-leading ninth home run of the season, a solo shot, and Ashe added his round-tripper two batters later for a 4-1 lead.
Ashe, who was 5 for 12 with four runs scored and three RBIs in the series, said teamwork has been the key for the Raiders’ success all season.
“It was a curve ball and I honestly felt that once it got over Armani’s [Johnson] head in center field, then I felt like I had a chance for an inside-the-park home run,” he said.
Wright State added three more runs in the fifth inning for a 7-1 advantage and Ashe added a run-scoring single in the eighth frame to make it 8-1.
The Penguins scored two runs in the ninth but fell for the fifth consecutive game.
YSU second baseman C.J. Morris, who had two of YSU’s 11 hits in the game and was one of 12 seniors honored in pre-game ceremonies, hopes the Penguins can finish strong despite playing their last 13 regular season games on the road.
“We just didn’t have the clutch hitting this weekend and they made us pay for our mistakes,” he said. “You have to minimize the damage with a team as explosive as Wright State and we didn’t do that this weekend.”
Pasquale praised his senior class.
“The main word to describe this class is ‘class.’ I wanted to win today more for them than anything else,” he said.