The baseball team won its second straight weekend series on April 15-16, taking two of three games against Northwestern Oklahoma State University (NWOSU) at Jerry Moore Field. The Bisons scored 16 runs in the first two games of the series, winning 9-3 and 7-2, before falling 4-1 in game three.
Redshirt senior outfielder Harrison Hunter, who tallied four hits in the series, said he was excited about the way the team’s batting has improved over the course of the season.
“Throughout the year we haven’t had (a lineup) that completely works,” Hunter said. “A couple of guys would hit, and we could score runs when they came up, but it was mix-and-match. Now we’re scoring runs from top, middle, to bottom.”
The Bisons, who sit in 8th place in the Great American Conference (GAC), swept conference leader University of Arkansas-Monticello over the previous weekend, and with two victories over NWOSU, put themselves in position to reach the eight-team GAC Tournament.
Hunter said that he and the other 11 seniors have no plans of ending their careers without competing in the postseason.
“If we don’t make the tournament, we only have seven more (games),” Harrison said. “That’s it. We’re not getting drafted — we’re not going to play somewhere else — so really all we have is getting a chance to go play in the tournament and to win a regional.”
According to sophomore infielder Grant Guest, who went three for three in game one of the series, the underclassmen have looked to rally around the seniors as the GAC tournament approaches.
“We’ve been seeing the light at the end of the tunnel for some of these seniors,” Guest said. “It’s getting pretty real that before long these guys have to go off and do their jobs and that these are the last few baseball games they get to play. Being able to play a year with these seniors and getting to learn from them and have them trust in me on the field has been a cool thing.”
With six conference games remaining, the Bisons can clinch a berth in the GAC tournament with two wins against Southwestern Oklahoma State University in Weatherford, Oklahoma, today and tomorrow, April 22-23.
Guest said that the team’s only focus is winning those two games and letting the rest of the season take care of itself.
“There’s been a different atmosphere knowing we (have) to step it up and come to play every game,” Guest said. “That’s our team goal, to get in the tournament, because once you get in, anything can happen.”
