Box Score OKLAHOMA CITY (April 25, 2017) – It certainly wasn't the way Oklahoma Christian baseball coach
Lonny Cobble wanted to win his team's final home game of the season, but the rulebook went in the Eagles' favor on Tuesday night against visiting Southwestern Oklahoma State.
The official statistics will say OC beat Southwestern 4-2 at Dobson Field, but it wasn't quite that cut-and-dried, as a two-run rally by the Bulldogs in the top of the sixth was wiped out after the nonconference game was called after a 38-minute lightning delay before the start of the bottom of the sixth inning.
Under NCAA rules, if a game is called due to weather, the score reverts back to what it was at the end of the last completed inning, which was the fifth. Fortunately for OC (26-20), it scored three runs in the bottom of the fifth to go ahead 4-2.
OC took a 1-0 lead in the top of the first when
Jake Collins singled home
Lane Paul, who had walked. Southwestern (17-24) tied the game in the fourth with three straight two-out singles off OC starter
Kolton Brown, and the Bulldogs went up 2-1 in the fifth when Richard Marches reached on a three-base error and scored on a fielder's-choice grounder from Joshua Santos.
In the bottom of the fifth, Southwestern starter Skyler Martin (0-4) gave up four straight hits with one out, the biggest a two-run, stand-up triple to center field by Paul, OC's senior catcher. That scored
Hayden Strobel and
Josh Garbrecht to put the Eagles ahead, and Paul came home on a single by
Chad Kennedy.
Southwestern's Jason Nichols and Connor Anderson both walked and scored on a single by Marches in the top of the sixth, but when the game was called, that half-inning was wiped off the books.
OC reliever
Jake Moore (1-1) picked up the win, allowing only the unearned run in his one official inning of work.
The win came on the fifth anniversary of Cobble's hiring as the Eagles' coach.
OC will wrap up the regular season this weekend with a three-game Heartland Conference series at Rogers State. The games now are scheduled to play a 3 p.m. doubleheader on Friday and a single game at noon on Saturday, but that could change, depending on weather.
