Ohio State baseball knocks off Michigan, 8-3, to advance in Big Ten tournament
Ben Martens via our friends at Land-Grant Holy Land
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First-team All-Big Ten performers Nick Sergakis, Ronnie Dawson, and Tanner Tully led the Buckeyes to their fourth win over the Wolverines this season.
Just ten days ago, Ohio State finished off a three-game sweep against Michigan. On Wednesday night in the last game of day one of the Big Ten tournament, the Buckeyes used a six-run fifth inning to claim a lead they would not relinquish, defeating the Wolverines for the fourth straight time, 8-3.
On Tuesday, Ohio State's Nick Sergakis, Ronnie Dawson, and Tanner Tully were all named first-team All-Big Ten, and those three players more than backed up those accolades in Omaha against their archrival.
Sergakis had himself a night to remember at TD Ameritrade Stadium, hitting a pair of solo home runs. The Buckeyes' third baseman went 3-for-5, driving in two runs, and scoring two.
Dawson responded as well, with a 3-for-3 night that included an RBI and a run scored.
Tully, the final member of the all-conference trio, did what he's done all season, quietly putting together another quality start and limiting damage in big situations. The lefty from Elkhart, Indiana allowed three runs on seven hits in seven innings of work, striking out three and yielding no walks. It was Tully's sixth consecutive quality start, and 10th of the season overall.
Brett Adcock, who earned second-team All-Big Ten honors for Michigan, lost for the second time to the scarlet and gray. After allowing three runs in 6.2 innings with nine strikeouts in Columbus, the lefty gave up six runs in just four innings on this day, striking out four.
After Sergakis gave the Buckeyes a 1-0 lead with the screaming liner into the bullpen down the left field line in the bottom of the the third, Michigan responded with a two-run homer from Drew Lugbauer for a 2-1 advantage.
Just like they have done throughout the past month, though, the Buckeyes took a punch and fought back. Thanks to the first seven batters of the inning reaching safely and some unraveling from that team up north in the bottom of the fifth, Ohio State put up six runs to reclaim the lead 7-2.
Sergakis led off with his second homer of the night to knot things up 2-2. It was nearly a carbon copy of his smash from the earlier in the game.
After that, Craig Nennig, Dawson, and Troy Kuhn singled consecutively for a 3-2 lead. L. Grant Davis, who entered the game in the third inning when Troy Montgomery was pulled for precautionary reasons due to an apparent ankle injury, followed that with scorcher to right-center for a two-run triple which ended Adcock's night and gave Ohio State a 5-2 advantage.
Mac Lozer came on in relief, and Jacob Bosiokovic kept the line moving with an RBI double, making it 6-2, then came around himself thanks to two straight wild pitches, and it was 7-2 in favor of the Buckeyes.
It was Sergakis and Dawson again that added one to Ohio State's tally in the sixth against William Tribucher. A leadoff single for the former and a double to the left-center gap by the latter extended the lead to 8-2.
The Wolverines got a third run off Tully in the seventh thanks to a double by Harrison Wenson and an RBI groundout by Michael Brdar, but it was far too little, too late.
Senior Michael Horejsei and sophomore Seth Kinker struck out five in the final two innings to nail down the win.
Ohio State will now take on upset-minded Iowa, which knocked off top-seeded Minnesota earlier in the day, at 10:00 p.m. ET. The game will be broadcast live on Big Ten Network.
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