By Jayme Ramson
Assistant Sports Editor
The Bowling Green baseball team will take on Wright State today, for the second time in less than a week.
The Falcons defeated Wright State, 10-1, when they played them last week at Bowling Green’s Steller Field, but Bowling Green will travel to Dayton for today’s 6:30 p.m. contest.
The Falcons will send freshman right-hander Tyler Johnson to the mound today to face a young Wright State team that has three seniors and a combined 21 freshmen and sophomores.
The Raiders were 1-3 over the weekend against the University of Illinois-Chicago in Horizon League play. Wright State’s only win came in Friday’s series opener, 4-3. In Saturday’s first game, they lost 4-1 and then lost 4-3 in the second game. On Sunday the Raiders lost their fourth game of the week, 4-3.
Center fielder Chris Tuttle leads the team in most offensive categories, and he was 2-for-4 against the Falcons last week with the Raiders’ lone RBI of the game. Tuttle boasts a .373 batting average, 53 hits, 29 runs scored, nine doubles and six triples.
Bowling Green’s Johnson will be making his first appearance since pitching two innings of relief against IPFW last Tuesday. He will start for the first time since he pitched in BG’s 9-3 win over Cleveland State on April 2. He gave up one unearned run and four hits in three innings of work.
Bowling Green lost three of four games over the weekend, to fall to 12-16 overall and 5-7 in the Mid-American Conference West Division.
The Falcons’ lone win of the four-game series against Northern Illinois came on Saturday afternoon. Bowling Green survived two rain delays to defeat the Huskies, 10-4 in Dekalb, Ill. Starter Keith Laughlin recovered from a four-run first inning and combined with Neil Schmitz to shut down Northern Illinois the rest of the game. Laughlin struck out seven in six innings of work. The game was shortened to seven innings.
The Falcons started their comeback in the third inning with two outs. Jimmy Lipari and Nolan Reimold were on base when Kelly Hunt singled to center field, scoring one run and advancing Reimold to third. Kevin Longstreth then doubled to score Reimold and Hunt, cutting the score to 4-3 before a rain delay.
Bowling Green continued their rally in the fourth inning, scoring four runs, all with two outs. Hunt singled to knock in two runs and Longstreth also had an RBI in the inning. The Falcons would go on to score three more runs in the top of the sixth.
Northern Illinois took the three other games, handing the Falcons an 11-1 loss on Friday and 2-1 and 9-8 losses on Sunday.
Northern Illinois used four-run innings in the bottom of the second and again in the eighth to stifle the Falcons. Bowling Green scattered six hits in the game with Tyler Wasserman getting two hits for the Falcons.
Bowling Green’s Tyler Saneholtz limited Northern Illinois in Sunday’s first game. He allowed only one runner to reach second base in the first five innings, striking out seven and retiring 10 consecutive batters during those five innings. Saneholtz finished with eight strikeouts but Northern Illinois was able to get some hits off of him in the sixth inning.
BG’s David Barkholz and Steve Raszka were both 2-for-3 in the game. Barkholz hit his sixth home run of the season in the third inning and also doubled for the Falcons.
The Falcons took an early lead in the second game but Northern Illinois scored three runs in the seventh for an 8-4 lead. Bowling Green tied the game at 8 with four runs in the eighth. The Huskies won it in the bottom of the ninth when Scott Simon singled home the winning run.
Bowling Green plays in Dayton today before returning to play four games at Steller Field this weekend against Marshall.
