Big Ten Tournament Opens Wednesday vs. Rutgers
5/9/2023 8:39:00 AM | Softball
2023 Roster // 2023 Schedule // Follow on Twitter // Follow on Facebook // Season Stats
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – Postseason softball has arrived for Ohio State and it gets underway on Wednesday as the Buckeyes have earned the No. 6 seed in the 2023 Big Ten Tournament and will face 11th-seeded Rutgers at 11 a.m. CT (noon ET) in a first round game. This year's tournament will take place at Eichelberger Field in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois.
Wednesday's contest – along with the entirety of the Big Ten Tournament – will be aired live on BTN. Live stats will also be available on the schedule page of OhioStateBuckeyes.com and Twitter updates can be found at @OhioStateSB.
The winner of Wednesday's opening-round game will face third-seeded Minnesota in the quarterfinals on Thursday at noon ET (11 a.m. CT).
The Basics
Ohio State vs. Rutgers // Wednesday, May 10 // 11 a.m. CT (noon ET) // Champaign, Ill.
Watch Live: BTN // Live Stats // Twitter Updates // Big Ten Tournament Bracket
Briefly on the Buckeyes
- Ohio State finished the regular season with a 32-19 overall record and had a 12-11 mark in the Big Ten.
- The Buckeyes won five of their seven weekend series', capped off on Sunday with a 6-4 win at Nebraska to take two of three games against the Cornhuskers.
- Ohio State finished with the Big Ten's third-highest overall batting average at .307. A total of five everyday starters have a .300 or better average, led by sophomore Melina Wilkison, who checks in at .382 with 32 extra base hits.
- Sam Hackenbracht is a .352 hitter who was well over .400 in 23 Big Ten games (.421), followed by sophomore Kami Kortokrax (.333, 15 doubles) and senior Mariah Rodriguez (.338, 32 runs scored).
- Senior leftfielder Jaycee Ruberti is having the best season of her five-year college career. The Virginia Beach, Va. native is batting .327 with 22 RBI.
- Junior Allison Smith (17-11, 3.01 ERA, 200 Ks) and Emily Ruck (9-8, 4.15 ERA, 103.0 IP) have done the majority of the work in the circle this season for the scarlet and gray.
Scouting Rutgers
- Rutgers finished with a 9-14 record in Big Ten play and 32-24 mark overall.
- The Scarlet Knights lost two of three games on the final weekend of the regular season to Northwestern, but did win the middle game, 7-3.
- Rutgers' .287 team batting average was the sixth-best mark in the Big Ten and its slugging percentage of .447 also ranked sixth.
- Kyleigh Sand (.374), Morgan Smith (.360) and Payton Lincavage (.304) are the Scarlet Knights' top hitters while Raimy Gamsby (8-10, 3.52 ERA) and Jaden Vickers (11-7, 3.09 ERA) have the best pitching numbers.
So We Meet Again…
- Ohio State and Rutgers met for a three-game series in Columbus April 7-9 and each of the games was decided by one run.
- The Scarlet Knights took the opener, 6-5, before Ohio State bounced back to win on Saturday, 3-2, and Sunday, 4-3, in nine innings.
- Meggie Otte hit .444 on the weekend while Kaitlyn Farley drove in a team-high five runs and hit two home runs.
- Emily Ruck was the workhorse in the circle, going 16.0 innings while allowing just four earned runs. She was 2-0 with two complete games.
Buckeye That and That
- Ohio State is 7-3 in its last 10 games at Illinois' Eichelberger Field. It won two of three games there during the 2023 regular season, three times in 2021 and twice in 2017.
- The Buckeyes were 24-12 this season away from home, including a 13-9 mark in true road games and 11-3 in neutral site contests.
- Ohio State finished in the top half of the Big Ten standings for the 10th consecutive season.
- Sam Hackenbracht's .421 batting average in conference games was the fourth-best mark in the league.
- She also finished in the top five in RBI (fourth – 24), hits (fourth – 32), and total bases (fifth – 56).
- Allison Smith's 200 strikeouts this season were third-best in the Big Ten, behind only Autumn Pease (243) and Lauren Derkowski (217).
- In addition to a team-best .382 batting average, Melina Wilkison also had the Buckeyes' second-best mark with runners in scoring position (.388), with a runner on third and less than two outs (.846) and two-out RBI (18).
- Wilkison's 39-game streak of reaching base earlier this season was the longest by an Ohio State player in eight years, since Caitlin Conrad reached 41 games in 2015.
- The Buckeyes won 12 games this season by either one or two runs, including two last weekend at Nebraska.
