By CONNOR GRAY, Assistant Editor
The Northwestern baseball team played a series against Oklahoma Baptist and did not have a favorable outcome.
The Rangers lost two of three games to Oklahoma Baptist during the series in Shawnee.
“We pitched it and played defensively well,” Rangers head coach Ryan Bowen said. “We just didn’t hit well,”
That sums up the first game of the series on Friday, in which the Rangers lost 5-2.
Northwestern’s pitching staff put together a solid effort despite giving up five runs. The offense struggled, as they only managed two runs. Blake Hoffman got all the RBIs in the third and fifth.
The next game was the first of a doubleheader, and the Rangers did not get their act together.
The Rangers struggled with pitching early, giving up five runs including a grand slam.
In the fourth, the Rangers tried to make a comeback after getting down 8-0.
The Rangers got four runs, two of them unearned with RBIs from Hayden Priest and Joseph Frisby, to make it 8-4.
This was the closest the game got, as the Rangers got outscored for the rest of the game 8-2, making the final 16-6.
The Rangers needed to avoid a sweep to keep their playoff chances alive, so they proceeded to bounce back from this.
The Rangers put together an explosive offensive effort against the Bison and scored every inning except for the last two, with freshman Dylan Collins getting his fourth win by pitching four innings to keep the Bison at bay.
The Rangers dominated the entire game despite the final being 14-9, as they were not in danger.
“We really played well the whole game,” Bowen said. “We scored in almost every inning, and we had one very big inning.”
Blake Hoffman had three including a home run. Shaughn Kelly had three, including a home run of his own. Yugo Hamakawa, Brett Erickson and Fred Buckson each had one RBI. Brandon Holdren and Brayden Koenig each had two.
The biggest blunder the Rangers had was allowing a grand slam late in the game to make it 14-9, but it was too late for the Bison.
The next series for Northwestern will be in Searcy, Arkansas, against Harding University with the first game Friday at 2 p.m. and a double header Saturday at 1 p.m. and 4 p.m.
