The Falcon baseball team defeated the Dayton Flyers 5-4 on Wednesday afternoon in the Falcons’ home opener.
“I thought it was a great team win,” Falcons head coach Danny Schmitz said. “I thought we did a lot of great things today, we talked about the three phases with pitching, defense and hitting and I thought we did a really nice job.”
The game was originally scheduled to be held in Dayton, however, with bad weather predicted to hit the area, the game was moved to play in Bowling Green.
“We’ve been on the road for the first 19 games of the season,” Schmitz said. “It’s nice to be home, we had a game scheduled for last Tuesday, but it got canceled due to Mother Nature, so it’s nice to be at home and nice to get a (win).”
The team got on the board first in the second inning as junior infielder Gama Martinez hit an RBI double to make it a 1-0 game early, however Dayton jumped ahead in the third with an RBI sacrifice fly and a two RBI double. In the fourth, the Falcons were able to tie the game back up with an RBI single from junior outfielder RJ Williams and junior infielder Neil Lambert. The team was able to go ahead in the fifth as senior infielder Derek Drewes hit an RBI double to make it a 4-3 game.
However, in the sixth, Dayton was able to tie the game up once again as they took advantage of a bad infield hop to get an RBI single, as the game remained tied until the bottom of the ninth inning, when freshman infielder Dylan Dohanos came through with a two out, bases loaded RBI single to give the Falcons a 5-4 victory.
“It was a great two out rally,” Schmitz said. “We pinch hit Dylan Dohanos and the freshman came through. (He’s) a local boy and that’s a good way to start out his home career, so I’m really excited for Dylan.”
The team was also happy with the performance of their freshman players throughout the game, as freshman pitcher Ben Beutel started for the Falcons and allowed no hits with two strikeouts after one inning.
“He was a big key for us in the fall,” Schmitz said. “He’s been on the shelf, so it was nice that we got an inning out of him, Nick Neibauer got two hits and Dylan got two hits, so it was a good day for freshmen.”
The team will next play on Friday, Saturday and Sunday afternoons at home against the Ohio Bobcats.
“Ohio’s going to be a very good team,” Schmitz said. “Obviously they won the conference tournament last year and they’re one of the favorites this year, so we’re going to have to come out and be ready to go.”
