OSU Baseball: Cowboys Lose 12-5 in Regional Opener against Duke

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Well, the Cowboys still have a path to Omaha, but it now involves winning four games in a row to even make it to Supers.

Oklahoma State fell to Duke 12-5 in the first round of the Athens Regional on Friday night in Georgia. The Pokes will play Binghamton at 11 a.m. Saturday with their season on the line.

The game against the Blue Devils got away from OSU in the third, where Duke scored six runs to take a 9-0 lead.

Mario Pesca got the start on the bump but lasted those three innings. According to the ESPN+ broadcast crew, Sean Youngerman was initially scheduled to start the game but is dealing with an illness.

The Blue Devils plated three in the second, coming off a one-out double and a two-out single. Pesca was unlucky in that the wind messed with the ball that ended up being an RBI double. The ball just kept carrying before bouncing off the left-field wall.

Duke’s lead ballooned to nine in the third thanks to three home runs and an RBI double from Duke.

Pesca’s day ended having thrown 71 pitches while giving up the nine runs on nine hits while walking two, hitting one and striking out two.

Brennan Phillips came out of the bullpen and put together a solid long relief outing to save some arms going into the rest of the weekend. Phillips threw five innings where he gave up three runs on three hits while walking two and striking out eight.

The runs against Phillips came in the fifth. With the bases loaded Jake Hyde looped a ball into shallow left. Garrett Shull ran up and made a diving attempt at it, but it got past him, allowing the three runs to score.

The Cowboys’ runs came exclusively off the long ball.

Kollin Ritchie got the Cowboys on the board in the fifth with a home run to right that cleared the scoreboard at Foley Field. Shull then hit a ball over the trees beyond the left-field fence in the sixth. Ian Daugherty got in on the fun in the eighth with a homer into those trees.

Unfortunately for the Cowboys, all three of those were solo shots. Brock Thompson hit a two-run homer later in the eighth to break the solo streak.

Despite the seven-run deficit, the Cowboys had chances to keep up in the track meet.

Before Duke’s six-run bottom of the third, the Cowboys had the bases loaded in the top of the third, but Jayson Jones struck out attempting to check his swing.

OSU had the bases loaded again in the seventh, this time with one out. But Colin Brueggemann grounded into a double play to end the inning.

In total, the Cowboys left nine runners on base and were 0-for-4 with runners in scoring position. OSU was just 6-for-32 (.188) at the plate in the game.

So, the Cowboys will play Binghamton on Saturday. The Bearcats lost to Georgia 20-4 in their opening game. Should the Cowboys win that, they’d play the loser of Duke and Georgia on Sunday with a spot in the Regional final on the line. If OSU made it to that final, the Cowboys would have to beat whichever team came out of the winner bracket twice on Monday.