Second in the SUNYAC is where the Oswego State baseball team was, and second is where they remain. After going 3-2 over a five game span in just four days, they became the second SUNYAC team to hit 10 conference wins. 

The Lakers took the three game series from SUNY New Paltz after dropping game one and proceeded to split their two game showdown with first place SUNY Cortland. While the Red Dragons may be in first place, they are equally capable of being slain by the team wearing green and gold. 

The New Paltz series marked the Lakers’ first true home SUNYAC series of the season, beginning with a doubleheader before concluding Sunday in a tightly contested finale.

The first game started at a crawl. For the first five innings the bats were silent. That could be attributed to the six strikeouts that Mason Sands threw in just his seven innings. But the bottom fell out quickly for the Lakers, as the very next inning Louis Kaleb of the Hawks sent one over the wall for the opening marker. The next inning, he was involved in two more scoring plays. A total of four runs were dropped on the Lakers like a ton of bricks. Oswego was strong enough however, to take those bricks and drop them back on New Paltz in the next two innings. The top of the ninth was tied at four apiece, until the Hawks chucked another three bricks onto the pile, which the Lakers could not return. The Hawks won 7-4. 

Saturday’s second game was a tale of “cut off one head, two more take its place.” For every run the Hawks scored, the Lakers put two or three on the board right afterward. The Hawks went through four pitchers, none of whom played more than three innings. Meanwhile Jonah Shearer struck out six in his six innings pitched for Oswego. By the time the bats finally shut up, Oswego had dropped 11 runs on the Hawks, to their mere seven. 

So now the series was split and Sunday was the decider. Little did the Hawks know that the Lakers had larceny on their minds. The Hawks put a three piece on Oswego in the third, but the Lakers clawed two runs back in the proceeding innings. Then in the fifth, back-to-back home invasions took place. Dylan Rosenberg and Daniel Winchester both stole home and with that, gave the Lakers the lead. Matthew Drillings kept the Hawks quiet enough to get the save and the Lakers took the series two games to one. 

The two games in Cortland were scoring clinics, seeming to be each team giving the other a lesson in how they like to score. The first contest was Oswego going completely against their grain and scoring seven runs in just the first two innings, while the second was Cortland being unimpressed by Oswego’s inability to keep said scoring up and dropping eight on them in innings five and six. Both games ended in ratios of 2:1, with the first being 10-5 in favor of Oswego and the second being 12-6 in favor of Cortland. Five balls cleared the wall over the two matches, two for the Lakers, three for the Dragons. Both teams had indecisiveness episodes on the mound, with Cortland expending five pitchers in game one and Oswego expending a whopping seven in game two.

With all the drama, Oswego remains where they were, but a look up close at your potential prime SUNYAC rival is always a net gain. Their SUNYAC steam train rolls on out to Western New York to play the Blue Devils of SUNY Fredonia on the weekend and then returns home where the Red Dragons invade for one last decider of who is the superior force in the SUNYAC.