[media-credit name=”Courtesy of Jennifer Zuberbier” align=”alignright” width=”300″][/media-credit]

The UW Oshkosh men’s baseball team stands in third place in the Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference after beginning conference play this past weekend and winning three of their last six games to put their record at 11-10.

Titans head coach Kevin Tomasiewicz said hovering around a .500 record is not a good situation in baseball.

“It’s like the worst spot in baseball,” Tomasiewicz said. “You’re teetering around .500 which means you could be really good, you’re just not showing it.”

Tomasiewicz said it is frustrating the team has seemed to teeter around .500 for the past three years.

“With the schedule that we play and the type of competition that we play we’re not playing teams that are below .500 very much,” Tomasiewicz said. “We’re playing teams that are usually at least in the running of their conference tournament or the regional. We’ve been able to hang with them, it’s just that for three years now we just haven’t been able to consistently get over the hump.”

After a 3-2 loss to Concordia University Wisconsin on Thursday, April 6, the Titans began a four-game series with the UW-Stevens Point Pointers this past weekend, April 8-9.

The Titans split the series after losing their first game on Saturday by a score of 0-4 and then by winning their second game of the day by a score of 8-2. On Sunday, the Titans lost game one by a score of 4-0 and then won the second game in 11 innings with a score of 11-6.

In the Titans’ victory on Saturday in game two of the series, junior pitcher Nick McLees had a career high six strikeouts and allowed four hits all game.

The Pointers got things started in game two after scoring two runs in the bottom of the second, one off a wild pitch and the other off an RBI.

However, the Titans were quick to respond in the top of the third as they managed to score four runs in an inning that began with Titans’ junior first baseman Andy Brahier getting hit with a pitch that put him on first.

Brahier’s at bat was followed by two walks from sophomore infielder Zach Radde and junior shortstop Jack Paulson.

Brahier and Radde then scored on a single from Titans’ junior catcher Taylor Grimm.

Paulson then scored after stealing third and going home off a throwing error from the Pointers’ catcher. Grimm scored off a ground out from junior second baseman Noah Polcyn.

After keeping the Pointers scoreless in the bottom of the third, the Titans added two more runs to their score after a two-run home run from Brahier that also scored senior outfielder Johnny Eagan to put the score at 6-2.

The Titans tacked on two more runs in the top of the fifth, which began with a strike-out from junior outfielder Logan Reckert before three walks from the Pointers that loaded the bases before Eagan was walked and scored Polcyn.

The second run in the top of the fifth came via Radde making it to first on an error which scored sophomore outfielder Sam Schwenn.

The rest of the game went scoreless and ended with the final score of 8-2.

In their second victory of the weekend against the Pointers, the Titans got off to a fast start, scoring four runs in the top of the first. This inning began with two strikeouts for the Titans, followed by a walk that put Eagan on first.

Eagan advanced to second on a wild pitch and reached home on a double from Brahier. A single from Radde down the right field line scored Brahier and a home run from senior shortstop Tyler Kozlowski plated two.

Halfway through the first inning, the Titans were already ahead 4-0.

It was not until the bottom of the fourth when the Pointers answered back with a four-run inning to tie the game, which included a three-RBI double and a run-scoring single that tied the game at four by the end of the fourth.

The top of the fifth went scoreless for the Titans, which allowed the Pointers to score two runs in the bottom of the fifth off a two-run home run, which gave the Pointers the lead, 6-4.

During the top of the sixth, the Titans scored a run on a Grimm double that scored Radde to make the score 6-5.

The bottom of the sixth, as well as the whole seventh inning, was scoreless. In the top of the eighth, the Titans tied the game off a Radde single that scored Eagan.

The Titans were able to keep the Pointers scoreless in the bottom the eighth and after a scoreless ninth inning for both teams, extras were needed to decide the six-all tie.

The beginning of extra innings was scoreless for the first whole inning, but the Titans pulled away and scored five runs to take the lead.

A double from Paulson scored Kozlowski, a single from Schwenn scored Titans’ sophomore catcher Jensen Hinton and an Eagan walk with the bases loaded scored Paulson.

The Titans continued to score, as a sacrifice fly from Brahier that scored Polcyn and a Radde single that scored Schwenn occurred before the inning ended.

With the five runs scored, the Titans now had an 11-6 lead and after a scoreless bottom of the 11th for the Pointers, that was all was needed to secure the victory.

Radde said that although the team did not perform as well as they had hoped to open conference play, Tomasiewicz is still doing a good job of keeping up the morale of the team.
“[Tomasiewicz] is just trying to keep us confident because our goal right now is to obviously win the conference and I think we can definitely do that if we play better,” Radde said. “We’re confident that we can do well.”

Kozlowski said that the team needs to be ready to take on their opponents and come out strong from the beginning of each game, especially since conference play has started.
“We gotta come out ready to go and win,” Kozlowski said. “We gotta win as many as we can. Our conference season is real short, we can’t take games off. We gotta be ready to go right away.”

In Tuesday’s 14-2 victory over Ripon College, the Titans had a season-high 16 hits as they won their third matchup in a row with Ripon by a combined score of 35-4.

The Titans scored in every inning but two which began with an Eagan sacrifice fly that scored Schwenn in the top of the first.

Ripon managed to answer with a run scored in the bottom of the first to make the score 1-1, but that was as close as Ripon got to the Titans before they took control of the game and scored 13 runs in the next eight innings.

Tomasiewicz said although the team did not have the best performance over the weekend to open conference play, the team is showing some good signs and the season is far from over.

“Plenty of games to play and right now our goal is to get better,” Tomasiewicz said. “You always want to be playing your best baseball at the end of the season because that’s the most important time of the season. Our goal is to be peaking that last weekend in conference play when we probably end up playing the number one team in the country (UW-Whitewater).”

The Titans continue WIAC play today and Friday, April 13-14, against UW-La Crosse in a four-game series and the first home series of the season for the Titans.