Oklahoma State Advances In Athens Regional With 13-5 Win Over Binghamton
ATHENS, Ga. – Oklahoma State smashed seven home runs and staved off elimination at the NCAA Athens Regional Saturday as the third-seeded Cowboys knocked off No. 4-seed Binghamton, 13-5, at Foley Field.
With the win, the Cowboys improved to 29-24 and will take on the loser of tonight's Georgia-Duke contest Sunday at 11 a.m. (CDT). Binghamton ended its season at 29-26.
The seven home runs by the Pokes is the most ever in an NCAA Tournament game under head coach Josh Holliday, surpassing the five against Florida in last June's NCAA Stillwater Regional. It is tied for the seventh most in a tournament game in NCAA Baseball Championship history, two shy of the record.
Six different Cowboys homered against BU, and four Pokes had multiple hits in the contest. Kollin Ritchie led the way, going 3-for-4 with a pair of homers and a career-high four RBIs.
Stormy Rhodes came out of the bullpen and earned the first win of his collegiate career as he improved to 1-1. The freshman right-hander allowed just one run on three hits in 2 1/3 innings.
Hunter Watkins started on the mound for the Pokes and worked 4 2/3 innings, striking out four and allowing four runs on six hits.
Ethan Lund closed out the game with two shutout innings and a pair of strikeouts in his first appearance since April 1.
OSU jumped out to an early lead in the first. Back-to-back doubles from Brayden Smith and Avery Ortiz to open the inning made it 1-0, and Ritchie joined in on the fun with an RBI double of his own to put the Cowboys up by two.
The Bearcats got on the board in the second, plating an unearned run when OSU dropped a fly ball in left field that made the score 2-1.
A power surge by the Cowboys grew their lead in the third. For the first time this season, OSU hit three consecutive homers as Ritchie, Colin Brueggemann and Ian Daugherty all went deep to extend the advantage to 5-1.
It was more of the same in the fourth as the Cowboys went back-to-back once again. This time, it was Ortiz with a two-run blast followed by a bomb off the bat of Nolan Schubart, which marked his team-leading 18th round tripper of the season and 58th of his career.
With OSU leading 8-1, the Bearcats used two long balls of their own to cut their deficit to 8-4 in the fifth, but the Cowboys got two of the runs back in the bottom of the inning on an Alex Conover solo homer and a RBI groundout by Smith.
The Pokes plated their final three runs in the eighth to put the game away, which included Ritchie smacking his second homer of the game and 13th of the season, a two-run job over the right-field wall.
