Ohio State excellence is not exclusive to the football field or the basketball court. Around the Oval is our way of keeping you informed of the amazing things happening with the other 34 varsity sports on campus.
2 More Titles For titletown
All Ohio State does is win National Championships. This week, as I'm sure you heard, two more Buckeye teams took home hardware: synchronized swimming and pistol.
The synchronized swimming team competed in the National Championship last weekend and picked a pretty clutch time to post their best score of the season, topping the standings with 93.0 points. These Buckeyes are no strangers to this sort of success; this title is the team's 29th US Collegiate National Championship, which is the most of any Ohio State sport. On top of the team National Championship, eight Buckeyes were named All-Americans, and Senior Heidi Liou was named the U.S. Synchro Athlete of the Year.
The pistol team also competed for a title this weekend and won, again. For the second straight year, the Buckeye Pistol team won the Pistol Intercollegiate National Championship. The back-to-back champs also took home seven 1st team and nine second team All-American honors, in addition to two individual titles by Irina Andrianova and Glenn Zimmerman.
Baseball Buckeyes Winning, Ryan Riga Untouchable
The baseball Buckeyes had a three-game series at Rutgers last weekend, which they won 2-1. In their two wins of the weekend, the Buckeyes looked like two different teams. Friday night, the Buckeyes had an offensive explosion scoring a season high 13 runs on 12 hits to get the 13-4 win. Sunday however, was a completely different story. The Buckeyes' bats went cold and they were only able to push across a single run on three hits, which generally spells doom for a team.
Enter Ryan Riga.
Buckeye ace Ryan Riga hadn't given up a run in 20 straight innings entering into Sunday's game, and he didn't then either. The senior lefty tossed a complete game shutout, leading the Buckeyes to a 1-0 win. In the process, Riga broke the Ohio State shutout innings streak, which was set at 22.1 innings by Bob Spears' in 1995. His performance ups his total to 29 straight scoreless innings and counting. It's hard to win when you only score one run, but it's impossible to lose when you can make sure your opponent scores none.
The Buckeyes also played a single game this week against the Bobcats of Ohio University on what was a rather chilly Tuesday night. It took extra innings, but sophomore L Grant Davis gave the Buckeyes the 7-4 win on a walk-off three-run homer in the 10th.
B1G Lacrosse is Officially a Thing
This year marks the first year that the Big Ten has sponsored men's lacrosse. Adding Johns Hopkins as an associate member (for lacrosse only) gave the Big Ten six member schools with varsity lacrosse programs, which is enough for the conference to sponsor the sport. The first ever Big Ten Conference games took place this past weekend, and the Buckeyes were matched up with Penn State. Thanks in large part to senior and leading scorer Jesse King's hat-trick and assist, the Buckeyes bested Penn State 10-8. As part of his hat-trick, King scored his 100th career goal as a Buckeye, which is good for eighth in school history.
The win gives the Buckeyes one of the two wins needed to secure the Creator's Trophy, which is competed for by the first three Big Ten schools to sponsor men's lacrosse: Ohio State, Michigan, and Penn State. The trophy is given to a team that goes 2-0 against the others; it is not awarded when there is a 1-1 tie.
Other Scores and News
- Women's Lacrosse beat Michigan 13-5 and Hofstra 12-11. Tori DeScenza became Ohio State's all time saves leader with 502 career saves.
- Women's Tennis beat Purdue 4-3 and Indiana 6-1
- Rowing won 5/6 races against Louisville and 5/6 races against Notre Dame
- Men's Tennis lost to No. 3 Illinois 4-0, ending a 97-match conference win streak that dated back to 2005
- Softball won weekend series against Maryland 2-1, and split a double header against Pittsburgh
- Women's tennis sophomore Gabriella De Santis named B1G Athlete of the Week
- Men's Lacrosse freshman Colin Chell named B1G Freshman of the Week
What's Happening This Week
- Men's Lacrosse hosts Johns Hopkins in the Horseshoe on Saturday April 4 at 6 p.m.
- Women's Lacrosse travels to Penn State Saturday and to Duke Thursday
- Baseball plays its next nine games at home starting with a weekend series against Penn State
- Softball has a three-game weekend home series against Nebraska, then travels to Penn State April 7
- Men's Gymnastics heads to their NCAA qualifier meet on April 9 in Norman, Okla.
- Women's Gymnastics hosts their NCAA Regional meet in Columbus on Saturday April 4 at 6 p.m.
- Men's Tennis hosts Minnesota Friday at 3 p.m. and Wisconsin April 5 at noon
- Women's Tennis travels to Austin to take on Texas on Saturday
2014-15 'Ship Count: 4
- Football
- Wrestling
- Pistol
- Synchronized Swimming
