Marshall University Athletics
Herd Hosts Ohio Wednesday at 2 p.m.
4/3/2012 12:00:00 AM | Baseball
April 3, 2012
HUNTINGTON, W.Va. -- Marshall's baseball team will host its first home game of the season when the Ohio Bobcats visit the Thundering Herd at the Kennedy Center Wednesday at 2 p.m.
The game will be the first of four played at the Kennedy Center this season as Morehead State and Eastern Kentucky (twice) all plan to make mid-week visits of their own.
Marshall is 44-111-1 all-time against Ohio and defeated the Bobcats 6-1 exactly two weeks ago in a mid-week contest that saw the Herd wait until the seventh inning to stage its comeback.
Six different Herd batters recorded hits in the win, but the story was not Marshall's offense. The Herd pitching staff, led by freshman Lance Elder's four innings of two-hit ball, stifled Ohio to just three hits for the game. Ryan Hopkins, Matt Margaritonda, Joe Church, Josh King, and Jesse Fernandez all saw time out of the pen and combined for five innings, allowing no runs and just one hit.
Alfredo Brito drove in two runs with a single in the seventh inning in that victory. The junior designated hitter went 1-for-4 and brought his hit streak to 10 games; it has grown to 15 games since.
Ohio (13-15, 3-3 MAC) has gone 4-5 since the loss to Marshall on March 20. Freshman Jake Madsen leads the Bobcats in hitting at a .389 clip and currently rides a 21-game hit streak. The Cincinnati native went 2-for-4 in the team's most recent outing, an 11-2 loss to the Cincinnati Bearcats at home on Tuesday.
More recently for the Herd, the team lost a series to Liberty in Beckley, W.Va. over the weekend. After succumbing to four-run defeats on Friday and Saturday, an enormous rally helped the team snap a five-game losing skid on Sunday. Freshman Eric Escobedo emerged as a major threat with a 3-for-5 performance where he drove in two runs and scored one.
Junior centerfielder Isaac Ballou combined three stolen bases on Saturday with one on Sunday to surge into the Conference USA lead of 14. He is followed closely by three players from UCF.
Wednesday's game can be followed via .
