May 17, 2007

Penguins Fight for Fourth Seed in Final Regular-Season Series at CSU

    Youngstown -- Youngstown State will play its final series of the regular season this weekend in a four-game set at Cleveland State. Games one and two will start Friday at 3 p.m. at Pipe Yard Stadium in Lorain, Ohio, and the teams will also play a doubleheader Saturday at 1 p.m.
    The series has seeding implications for next week's Horizon League Championship with YSU, Cleveland State and Butler all fighting for fourth place. The Penguins are currently tied for fourth with Butler with a Horizon League record of 8-18, but YSU owns the tiebreaker by taking four of the six games from the Bulldogs during the regular season. Cleveland State currently sits sixth by .004 points with a record of 7-16.
    Butler will play four home games against UW-Milwaukee, which is cemented in as the third seed in the tournament. UIC and Wright State have already notched the top two seeds, respectively, and will play a three-game series in Dayton starting Friday.
    YSU enters the CSU series after a four-game split with UW-Milwaukee last weekend. On Friday, the Penguins overcame a six-run deficit - its largest comeback of the season - to win 9-8 on Tom Clayton's walk-off single in the bottom of the ninth. YSU then played a perfect game in the field and got 3 2/3 scoreless innings from its bullpen in a 4-3 victory on Saturday. The Penguins lost 8-3 to Akron on Tuesday in their lone midweek game.

Scouting the Vikings
    Cleveland State has been scuffling over the past four weeks having dropped its last 16 games. The Vikings have posted one run or less in nine of the 16 losses, but they erupted for 15 runs in a 16-15 loss to Pittsburgh on Tuesday. Cleveland State swept a Tuesday doubleheader from YSU on April 10 as part of a stretch where it won five of six. However since that stretch, CSU has gone 1-19.

Earlier This Season Against Cleveland State
    Cleveland State took both games of a doubleheader against YSU on April 10 at Cene Park. The Vikings scored two unearned runs in the 14th inning of game two and got a complete-game effort from Stephen Procner in game one.
    After winning a fast-paced game one 3-2 in just two hours and 16 minutes, the Vikings led by the same score before John Koehnlein singled in C.J. Morris in the bottom of the ninth to extend the game to a near four-hour marathon.
    Both teams scored an unearned run in the 11th inning, and the Vikings got their fourth and fifth unearned runs in the 14th to escape with a 6-4 win.
    Theo Hudson reached on an error to start the 14th, and back-to-back Vikings popped attempted sacrifice bunts over reliever Corey Vukovic's head for infield singles. Vukovic got a strikeout, but two Vikings scored on Bobby Cash's single through the right side and an ensuing error in right field.
    The Vikings led 3-0 in game game one after posting two runs in the second and another run in the third. YSU got on the board in the fourth when Koehnlein reached on an infield single and scored on Gattozzi's RBI double. Ryan Dunlap then came home on a Robinson sacrifice fly in the fifth.
    Procner, who leads the Horizon League with 63 strikeouts, allowed only two hits over the final four innings.