The Harding Bisons baseball team defeated Ouachita Baptist University two games to one in last weekend’s three-game series, played in Arkadelphia, Ark. On Tuesday the team split a doubleheader at home against Christian Brothers University. The Bisons are currently 22-16 overall and 6-9 in conference play.

Last weekend’s series against the Tigers began on Friday afternoon with a split doubleheader. The Bisons ended the first game with a 5-2 loss but came back for a win in the second game, 7-4. Senior infielder Chase Presley said that the Bisons lost the opener mainly because of the Tiger’s pitcher, Ryan Westover, who threw eight innings and gave up only two runs and three hits.

“I have to give it to [Oua-chita], their pitcher had a really good game,” Presley said. “We really just couldn’t get much off him. Going up against such a good arm like that, you just have to do what you can and in that game we just didn’t have much offense. But I think that by the next two games, we were tired of losing. We realized that if this is going to be our season, we are going to have to fight.”

The Bisons concluded the series on Saturday with a 4-3 victory. Junior pitcher Lucas Waddell allowed only four hits over the course of eight innings and finished the game as the fourth Bison pitcher to ever throw 20 career wins.

“Without the guys behind me and the hitters producing runs, I’m nothing,” Waddell said. “I think this stat shows how strong the team has been the past three years. I always like to think I could have done better. I walked and hit two batters who came around and scored. That always hurts. But my goal was to give my team a chance to win, and we did that.”

Members of the team said they hold Waddell in high regard and that his record only strengthens their confidence in his pitching abilities.

“Since he has won so many games in his career, I think that whenever he’s on the mound, I feel like the team knows he is going to have a good pitching performance,” Presley said. “We have confidence in him. Whenever Lucas is on the mound, the team has a pretty good feeling that we’re going to win.”

On Tuesday, the Bisons split a doubleheader with Christian Brothers, losing the first game 8-9 and winning the second game 3-2. The Bisons only got off four hits during the second game. Junior pitcher Ryan Modglin, who opened in the first game of the series, said the Bisons won the second game because of mistakes made by Christian Brothers, who made three errors late in the game.

“We weren’t really hitting the ball that well for the first five innings or so of the game,” Modglin said. “Then in the late innings [Christian Brothers] started making errors, and though we didn’t do it fully, we started to hit the ball hard on the ground. But we didn’t earn it. We only won because they made the errors.”

This afternoon at 3 p.m., the Bisons will play the first of a three-game conference series at home against Arkansas Tech University. Games two and three will take place as a doubleheader tomorrow beginning at noon.

“This weekend is a pretty big weekend for us against Tech,” Presley said. “We’re both in the bottom half of the conference battling for those six spots, so this is a big weekend for us. “

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