Ohio State Baseball Trying To Make The Most Of Tough Losses, Preparing For Another Challenging Weekend

Despite carrying a record of 1-5, Ohio State has shown some promise over its first couple of weekends in head coach Justin Haire’s first season with the program.

Each of the three game’s against Arizona State were winnable during the opening weekend before the Buckeyes went on to beat a ranked NC State team at the Jax College Baseball Classic only to lose to Coastal Carolina and Alabama to finish the series.

They had as good of a shot as any to take down the unbeaten Crimson Tide when they took a 10-0 lead early in the game, but gave that up and eventually lost 12-10 on a three-run walk-off home run. That came a day after the Chanticleers scored two runs in the 11th inning to top Ohio State 10-8.

Haire obviously would have liked to walk away with a win in those games, but thinks it can be twisted into a positive for the Buckeyes moving forward since that’s the option they are left with.

“It’s OK to feel the pain that we’re feeling right now, as long as we don’t waste that pain moving forward,” Haire said on Feb. 24. “I think pain is a driver for change. It gives us an opportunity to grow and really learn and get better through this challenging early stretch.

“To a certain extent that happened from Week One to Week Two, we just didn’t punch through on Saturday and Sunday when we certainly had the opportunity to. We hope to be able to do that in the future.”

There’s not a long wait to see how the Buckeyes respond from a tough weekend with them headed to Arlington, Texas, for the College Baseball Series at Globe Life Field where they match up against Auburn, Baylor and No. 9 Oregon State.

Those three teams currently have a combined four losses so far this season and will continue this lengthy test Ohio State is facing, one that could pay off for it this season.

“It does feel very similar to an NCAA tournament regional atmosphere,” Haire said about playing three very talented teams in one weekend. “But having just done this weekend and then to do it again next weekend, hopefully by the time we get the chance to punch our ticket to the NCAA tournament, we will have some experience with it. … The preparation, the experience and the opportunity to jump in with traditional college baseball powers has been realy fun and makes it worth it for our guys.”

But despite how close some of the losses have been for the Buckeyes, Haire knows they need to right the ship immediately since these games mean as much when it comes to their record as one in May.

“We don’t get a spring training. We don’t get six weeks down in Arizona to play games that don’t count,” he said. “(We need to) divide out where are the positives, where are the negatives that we need to stop doing, where afre the controllable things that we need to make adjustments and corrections and attack all three of those areas.

“We don’t walk out of there pointing fingers at each other and splitting and splintering. We walk out of there down, challenged, a little bit ticked off and a little bit embarrassed, and we use that to bring us closer together to drive our work and drive our passion and desire to be a better ball club moving forward.”