Spring Break
Large crowd not enough to boost MU
Dan Kukla
Issue date: 3/28/08 Section: Sports
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In front of a large crowd with a 60 degree game-time temperature, the RedHawks failed to take advantage of favorable playing conditions and fell to the Flyers 7-3. Nevertheless, the Red and White was encouraged by the enormous amount of support the team received and hope it is a sign of good things to come.
"(We had) great, great fans, great, great fan base and crowd tonight," said senior pitcher Steve Antoniotti. "(It was) really the first warm day of baseball of the year here in Oxford so it was a lot of fun to see that. Sorry we couldn't give them a better show but we will turn around. I know a lot of people aren't really used to seeing Miami baseball be at 5-14 or 5-13 and all that, but I promise we have the talent, we will definitely turn it around here very soon."
Coming off last year's campaign in which it finished 32-24 and made a trip to the MAC Tournament, Miami has struggled to a 5-14 record thus far. Starting the year against four nationally ranked teams certainly didn't help matters, and neither did playing the first 15 contests on the road. Now into the conference schedule with several home stands on the docket, the RedHawks will look to turn things around.
"(We've had) a really tough schedule but we're very young and to be honest with you, our record is very deceiving," Antoniotti said. "The baseball gods as they like to say haven't really gone our way so far this year. To be honest with you nobody's panicking, nobody is hitting any type of buttons saying, 'Oh crap, we're not going to be playing as well this year.' But we are definitely working on things for this coming weekend and we're just taking it one game at a time."
Dayton entered Wednesday's game on a six game skid against the 'Hawks. After taking a 2-0 lead on back-to-back one-run innings in the third and fourth, the Flyers exploded for five runs in the fifth to break the game wide open. The visitors started their big inning with three singles in four batters to score a run. Miami then brought in relief pitcher sophomore Brandon Meister who proceed to hit the first two batters he faced, loading the bases and pushing another Flyer past home plate. Two Dayton singles later, the Flyers were in control of the game with a 7-0 lead.
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