BGSU softball has officially been eliminated from MAC Tournament contention, falling five wins outside of Northern Illinois (sixth place) with only two MAC games left to play. It counts as BG’s third straight season of missing the tournament.
Along with the pain of missing the playoffs is the pain of being swept on the road by your rival. The Toledo Rockets swept BG in the Battles of I-75 with a combined score of 25-14, winning both the first and third games by five runs.
Not only were they losses, but two were quite difficult ones. In the second game, BG held the lead until the bottom of the seventh inning, Toledo tying the Falcons 5-5 before their walk-off home run in the bottom of the tenth inning. The day got worse as in the third game (second on Saturday) the Orange and Brown sported a 5-2 lead through the top of the sixth inning, the Rockets burning through three Falcon arms for eight runs on eight hits in the bottom of the frame, winning 10-5.
A truly heartbreaking weekend was exasperated by another occurrence of the offense and defense being unable to succeed simultaneously. Falcon batters did not have a bad weekend, batting .336 with four doubles, a triple, and eight walks, all while batting 15.2 innings against Toledo ace Sophia Knight, a top-ten pitcher in the MAC.
Late in the season, but shortstop Cam Kaufman had the best weekend of any player. She went six for eight in the batter’s box, knocking in a run and scoring two. She contributed two of the seven multi-hit games for BG and is up to a .276 average and .723 OPS.
Yet the pitching staff was not able to pull their weight, none of the four pitchers allowed less than four earned runs. In fact, the only run-less outing by any pitcher was Mackenzie Krafcik’s 0.2 innings pitched and no earned runs in the third game, the best appearance being Morgan Beckham’s 2.2 innings and one earned run. Both pitchers’ weekends were tainted by four earned runs in other games.
The last games of the season all happen in the coming week, a jam-packed schedule of Miami (OH), Notre Dame, and Robert Morris for the final six games of the season. Miami is a top-four MAC team, Notre Dame an ACC team, and Robert Morris a top Horizon League team with the most overall wins and least overall losses.
The schedule does not get easier. Although the MAC Tournament hopes are gone, the team has a chance to prove to themselves that they can put the game together and place value on every game indiscriminately.
Falcon Media Sports Network’s Ben Corak and Henry Kosko will have a call of the BG vs Miami doubleheader on Wednesday, April 30 starting at 1 pm on WBGU 88.1 FM.
