It’s been almost a week and a half since the GW baseball team finished its home sweep of St. Bonaventure, capping a seven-game winning streak that included six straight wins over conference opponents that vaulted the Colonials into first place in the Atlantic 10. Eleven days later, after a 9-5 loss to Georgetown Wednesday that marked the team’s sixth defeat in seven games, GW is still tied for first in the A-10, but any sense of achievement has seemingly since vanished.
It was the Colonials’ third loss this season in four tries against the Hoyas, who dropped two out of three against their cross-town rivals in a three-game set earlier this season. Although their eight hits Wednesday were their lowest of the four games this season against the Hoyas, senior first baseman Curtis Eward found little fault with the offense.
“I can’t say how many times we lined out to the right fielder, how many plays that they made,” said Eward, who went 1-for-3 and scored two runs Wednesday. “I don’t know, that’s just baseball. Sometimes balls don’t fall, sometimes they do.”
GW head coach Steve Mrowka agreed with Eward’s assessment.
“They caught four balls up against the fence, a little bit of wind or a little more, you know, whatever, and you got seven or eight runs right there,” he said. “It’s disappointing to come out and not score the runs we needed to score, because we actually got decent pitching for most of the game.”
Georgetown did most of its scoring in the third fourth and fifth innings, roughing up GW pitchers Kenny O’Brien and Jeff Griffith for seven runs and seven hits in those three innings. The remainder of GW’s pitchers – sophomore Stephen Oswald and junior Tommy Gately before them and sophomore Marshall Seedorff and freshmen Raj Dharmapal and Justin Albright after – combined to give up just two Hoya runs on two hits. The Colonials’ staff again struggled with its control, surrendering seven walks and hitting three batters.
GW also struggled in the field, committing five errors. With a crucial three-game set approaching this weekend on the road in Richmond, Eward said that while mid-week, nonconference games generally mean less than A-10 contests, the Colonials can’t afford to ignore them.
“Going into A-10 play, I really hope these mid-week games help people realize their mistakes, what they need to work on so they can get after it for the weekend,” Eward said. “These next three games are very, very important for us, in terms of A-10 standings.”
Offensively, GW was led by sophomore Ollie Mittag, who went 3-for-4, and junior Joe Motto, who collected his first two hits and RBIs of the season. Senior outfielder Jon Chirumbolo was also strong at the plate Wednesday, going 1-for-2 with a home run in the eighth inning that pulled the Colonials to within three.
With this weekend’s key road series against the Spiders coming up after a disappointing slate of mid-week games, Mrowka said regaining the positive momentum his team had earlier this season is a must.
“It’s baseball, so you got to try to live and learn, but at some point you gotta win some of these darn games,” Mrowka said. “We got to get things going. We’ve just been fortunate that we’ve been able to win some games in the weekend, and we’ve got to continue to work hard and try to get a positive thing going here.”
