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YSU baseball is Bloomington bound
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Youngstown State infielder Phil Lipari, left, shows the ball to the umpire after tagging out Kent State’s Cody Koch on a steal attempt during their April 30 game at Schoonover Stadium. The Penguins won 5-4. Both teams qualified for the NCAA regionals, which begin this weekend.
Penguins draw No. 4 overall seed Indiana in NCAA first round
By Joe Scalzo
AUSTINTOWN
Two years ago, when Steve Gillispie was introduced as Youngstown State’s new baseball coach following an 11-44 season, one of his first questions was, “How quickly can you turn around this program?”
“I felt like it could go fairly quickly,” he said. “But what you define as ‘turning around’ is in the eye of the beholder.
“Obviously, the number of wins wasn’t what we wanted it to be, but the outcome at the end was where I felt we could get the program.”
Thanks to a four-game sweep in last weekend’s Horizon League tournament — including two wins over top-seeded Wright State — the Penguins will make just their second NCAA tournament appearance in school history when they play at No. 4 overall seed Indiana at 7 p.m. Friday.
Stanford and Indiana State are paired in the other half of the Bloomington regional, which has a double elimination format. If YSU wins, it will play at 6 p.m. Saturday. If it loses, it will play at 2 p.m.
The winner moves on to the super regionals, where it will meet the winner of a Nashville regional that features Vanderbilt, Oregon, Clemson and Xavier.
“Indiana is fantastic,” said Gillispie, who will likely start either senior Patrick O’Brien (Boardman) or freshman Jeremy Quinlan (Brookfield). “They pitch, they have power and they’ve been to the World Series. It’s gonna be a tough road. They’re obviously No. 4 for a reason.”
The Penguins (16-36) have the worst record of any team in the tournament — Siena (25-31) and Bethune-Cookman (26-31) are the only other tournament teams with losing records — but Gillispie felt the team’s progress went beyond wins and losses.
“To a man, we felt we were playing a better brand of baseball,” said Gillispie, who went 14-43 in 2013 and 12-36 in this year’s regular season. “But for whatever reason, we didn’t win them.”
Part of the problem was experience — 16 of the team’s 35 players had never played Division I baseball before this season — and Gillispie felt like the team needed to learn how to win. While the Penguins did beat Pitt and Kent State — two NCAA regional teams — the only people who felt they could win the Horizon League tournament were wearing the team uniforms.
“Well, probably the parents, too,” Quinlan said.
YSU entered as the tournament’s sixth seed, but after five pitchers combined on a 7-3 opening-round win over Valparaiso, Quinlan (a Brookfield High graduate who walked on to this year’s team) took the ball against top-seeded Wright State and pitched the game of his life, holding the Raiders to one run on five hits for a 5-1 victory.
“After Game 2, we thought this could happen,” said senior Phil Lipari, a Poland High graduate who was named tournament MVP. “We started getting really excited.
“Everybody counted us out and we went in there with a chip on our shoulder and got it done.”
After an 11-5 win over Milwaukee, the Penguins again played Wright State and faced their first real adversity in the tournament. YSU gave up two runs in the bottom of the eighth inning to fall behind 4-3, then rallied for two runs in the top of the ninth.
Kevin Yarabinec closed it out with a 1-2-3 ninth, prompting a dogpile on the mound
“It was a surreal moment,” Quinlan said.
YSU went 0-2 in the 2004 tournament, falling at No. 1 overall seed Texas in the first round 10-3, then losing to TCU 12-8. The Penguins then went 29-27 in 2005 — their last winning season.
Lipari, a four-year starter, has gone 57-164 at YSU and entered last weekend’s tournament having lost more than 75 percent of his games in college. On Monday, he joined his teammates and his coaches at Quaker Steak and Lube in Austintown to watch the Selection Show, which drew dozens of fans and family members.
“We were pretty bad,” he said. “But it’s all worth it now. I wouldn’t trade this for the world and I’m sure every senior would say the same thing.
“It’s been a long journey, but I wouldn’t want to end it any other way.”