BOWLING GREEN — Bowling Green State University’s baseball team has a simple approach to this week’s Mid-American Conference tournament.
Don’t change a thing.
“I think the key is to just keep being who we’ve been all year,” BGSU senior shortstop Tyler Ross said. “We’ve really preached one pitch, one out, one inning at a time, and I think now that gets amplified.
“But if we can keep that focus, we focus on the 27 outs that we’re playing at that time, we’ll go from there.”
After a historic regular season in which BGSU set several program records, as well as a MAC record for best start in conference play to a season after beginning 17-0, the regular-season champion Falcons (32-18, 24-6) will be the No. 1 seed in their first MAC tournament since 2015.
(Video credit: Mid-American Conference)
BGSU’s first game will be at 2 p.m. Thursday. The Falcons will take on the lowest seed to advance from Wednesday’s first-round games. No. 3 Ball State takes on No. 6 Toledo, while No. 4 Miami will square off with No. 5 Kent State.
“I think when we clinched, the questions I was getting were, ‘How are you going to play, you’re in, you’re the one-seed,’ and it’s a simple answer: to win,” said fourth-year BGSU mentor Kyle Hallock, who was named MAC coach of the year Tuesday. “You’re playing to win every single game, and we started talking about it the beginning of May just to focus on these nine innings and really just lock in on what we’re doing.
“The only team that we need to lose right now is the one we’re playing. It’s not about scoreboard watching, it’s not about asking for help. It’s about playing our best when it matters the most. If we’ve been playing our best since August when we got together, we shouldn’t have to change a thing we’re doing.”
BGSU will be appearing in its 14th MAC tournament and will look to win its fourth title (1998, 1999, 2013) after winning a program-record 24 league games this season. The Falcons went 12-4 against teams that qualified for this year’s MAC tournament; BGSU had a pair of losses to Kent State and No. 2 seed Western Michigan.
BGSU, which enters the tournament on a five-game winning streak, has been a high-scoring machine throughout the season in ranking first in the MAC and sixth in the country in runs per game (9.4). The Falcons’ 427 RBIs, 296 walks, and .508 slugging percentage lead the league, while their .308 batting average and 543 hits rank second to Western Michigan.
Lately, BGSU has found different ways to win, and that could be significant this week.
After winning numerous high-scoring slugfests early in the year, the Falcons have come out on top in low-scoring contests more often than not. Each of BGSU’s last seven wins came with the Falcons scoring in single digits, including victories of 3-2, 8-6, and 3-1 over Toledo last week.
BGSU is 14-5 in games in which both teams score in single digits.
“I think it’s more critical than anyone thinks,” BGSU senior pitcher Rigo Ramos said. “We got a lot of help from the offense early in the year, and in a way, I think the pitching staff, it was easy to get comfortable.
“But these past few weeks, we’ve been playing some better teams that have better pitching staffs, so our offense hasn’t been able to put up 15 runs a game. I think it’s been good for our pitching staff to see that and have to lock back in, because these past few weekends have been tough, and they gave us that MAC tournament feel.”
On the mound, BGSU has racked up a program-record 379 strikeouts. The Falcons rank near the middle of the MAC in several pitching categories, including ERA (6.78) and walks allowed (231).
“I think one of the things about our pitching staff is, even when we were winning those games 15-12 or 17-10 or whatever they were, our guys left the field happy that they won but not satisfied,” Hallock said. “When those scores were going to be 17-2 or 10-1, then we’ve played a complete game. Even on days where we were winning, it wasn’t enough for those kids and for the pitching staff.”
Except for the series losses to Kent State and Western Michigan in back-to-back weekends late in the season, BGSU’s confidence level remains high.
One more big week in a season full of them could keep the Falcons’ campaign going in the NCAA Division I tournament.
“We’re the one-seed for a reason,” Ramos said. “We’ve been playing a good brand of baseball.
“We’ve been pitching it better, we’ve been scoring runs, we’ve been manufacturing, and we’ve been playing great defense out in the field. That’s going to be important for us to not change what got us to this point. It’s easy for teams to take the moment and get too excited about it and switch things up. We just have to play Falcon baseball, and it starts with coach Hallock leading the charge.”
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