- Box Score
| Joe Blackburn drove in the winning run with a game-winning double in the bottom of the tenth. He also went 2-for-5 in the game. |
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa.; May 18, 2007 ?C In the first extra-inning college game at Medlar Field at Lubrano Park, Joe Blackburn??s (Sinking Spring, Pa.) game-winning double to right center field in the bottom of the tenth inning scored Scott Gaffney (Westbury, N.Y.) from second to give Penn State a come-from-behind 3-2 win over Ohio State in the series opener on Friday night. Penn State improves to 26-23 overall with the win and is guaranteed to finish at least .500 overall for the regular season.
The Nittany Lions are now 18-9 in the Big Ten and remain in third place after Friday night??s games. The 18 Big Ten wins are the most since the 2000 season, a year in which Penn State made it all the way to the NCAA Super Regionals. It is also tied for the second-most Big Ten wins in school history, behind only the 19 wins by the 1996 team that won the Big Ten championship.
In the tenth inning, Gaffney led off with a single up the middle. After Cory Wine (Stillwater, Okla.) flew out, Gaffney stole second with Blackburn at the plate. On the very next pitch to Blackburn, a 2-1 fastball on the outside corner, Blackburn drove the ball into the gap in right center for the game-winning hit. It marked the 13th come-from-behind win for the Nittany Lions this year and the second in which the Lions have won a game at home in their final at-bat. Penn State also won a game in the bottom of the ninth in which it trailed by three runs entering the inning against Northwestern back on April 20.
Gaffney went 3-for-5 to lead Penn State and scored two of the Nittany Lions?? three runs. Blackburn went 2-for-5 with the only RBI of the game for Penn State while Rick Marlin (Orlando, Fla.) also had two hits, going 2-for-4.
| Matt Ogrodnik pitched three innings, allowing just one walk, to pick up his third win of the year out of the bullpen in his Big Ten-leading 25th appearance. He is also now one of just two pitchers in Penn State history to have 70 career appearances. |
The game was pitchers?? dual right up until the end. Cory Luebke, Ohio State??s flame-throwing southpaw, pitched seven innings and scattered seven hits while not allowing any earned runs. He struck out nine and walked just one but was forced to throw several pitches in the second inning, which saw him escape a bases-loaded, one-out jam without allowing any more Penn State runs.
Luebke was victimized by a two-out throwing error in the first inning that allowed Penn State to take a 1-0 lead. After Gaffney doubled to right with one out, he remained there with two outs and Blackburn grounded a ball to second base. Buckeye second baseman Cory Kovanda went back on it to field it and appeared to rush his throw to first and airmailed it well above the head of the first baseman, allowing Gaffney to trot home with the game??s first run.
Seth Whitehill (Bellefonte, Pa.) retired the first 12 batters of the game for Penn State but his perfect game was broken up by the first batter of the fifth as J.B. Shuck singled up the middle for Ohio State??s first hit of the game but he was doubled off first by Brian Ernst (Boyertown, Pa.) in center after he caught Justin Miller??s line drive. Whitehill then issued a two-out walk to Jason Zoeller and then gave up consecutive singles to Brian DeLucia and Cory Rupert, the latter of which scored Zoeller to tie the game. Whitehill gave up another walk to Kovanda to load the bases but escaped further trouble by getting Jacob Howell to bounce out to second base to end the inning.
Ohio State took the lead in the next inning as Matt Angle drew a leadoff walk and two outs later, stole second base on a close play at second. He scored on Miller??s single through the left side to make it 2-1 in favor of the Buckeyes.
With Luebke well over the 100-pitch mark, he left after the seventh inning and was relieved by Rory Meister in the eighth, who gave up a one-out double to Mike Deese (Roswell, Ga.) into the gap in left center. Deese then barely beat out a throw to third base after Ernst reached on an error by DeLucia at the hot corner as the ball caromed behind third base and was fielded by the shortstop Rupert, who didn??t come up with it cleanly at first and that delay proved costly as Deese just slid in under the tag of DeLucia. Marlin then popped out for the second out of the inning. Pinch hitter Garrett Field (Stillwater, Okla.) was sent up to the plate but before he even saw a pitch, Meiser caught Ernst in a rundown between first and second after faking to third and then throwing to first. First baseman Miller hesitated slightly in applying the tag and instead it took two more throws, one to the shortstop and one to the second baseman, who tagged out Ernst on a close play at second but not before Deese ran home and scored just before Ernst was tagged out to tie the game 2-2.
| Mike Deese scored the game-tying run after a one-out double in the bottom of the eighth. |
Matt Ogrodnik (Saltsburg, Pa.), who made his Big Ten-leading 25th appearance of the year, pitched three near-perfect innings to keep Penn State in the position to win the game. Ogrodnik faced just one over the minimum through his three innings, allowing only a one-out walk to Angle in the seventh before setting down the last eight batters he faced to set the stage for Gaffney??s and Blackburn??s heroics in the bottom of the tenth. Ogrodnik improved to 3-2 with the win.
With the win, Penn State remains in contention to win the Big Ten Championship, as the Nittany Lions need to sweep the Buckeyes and get help from elsewhere to do so. Penn State and Ohio State will continue the series tomorrow with a 4:05 p.m. doubleheader.
Notes: Ernst recorded his first outfield assist of the year when he threw to first to double off J.B. Shuck after catching a line drive in the top of the fifth??.By recording 16 putouts in the game, just one off his career high, Wine broke his own record set last year for putouts in a season. He had 419 last year and now has 427??.Gaffney collected his 12th career three-hit game??.Ogrodnik??s appearance was the 70th of his career, becoming just the second Penn State player in school history to appear in at least 70 games. Jeff Emerich holds the school record with 76??.Cavagnaro recorded six assist in the game and now has 147 on the season, which puts him in sixth place on the all-time season list. The record is 188??.This was the seventh game that Penn State won in its final at-bat this year??.Penn State is now 3-1 in extra-inning games this year....The Nittany Lions have now won six of Whitehill's eight Big Ten starts.