PORTSMOUTH, Va. (WAVY) — Old Dominion baseball’s 2023 season came to a close Tuesday with a 2-1 loss to No. 7 seed JMU in the first round of the Sun Belt Conference Tournament.
After taking a 1-0 lead in the third with a solo homer from Kyle Edwards (ODU’s 100th home run of the season), ODU (32-23) didn’t have another hit in the ballgame.
JMU got all the scoring it needed in the fourth inning, thanks to a 2-RBI double from redshirt senior Kyle Novak.
“I don’t think we played very well at all the second half of the season, a lot of that had to do with injuries you know, some of our better hitters weren’t in there a lot,” said ODU head coach Chris Finwood about the team’s struggles down the stretch. “Some of our better guys were playing today, still banged up. So injuries were part of the decision and we just had the wrong guys kind of get hurt and sometimes that’s how it goes.”
Finwood also said they “didn’t have good leadership on this team.”
“It wasn’t a team that I was super happy with really from a makeup standpoint starting at the beginning of the year we had a lot of issues we had to deal with, personalities I wasn’t in favor of, so we’ll get to dealing with that and get back.”
The win advanced the Dukes into the double elimination portion of the tournament. They’ll face No. 2 seed Southern Miss (the 16th ranked team in the country) on Wednesday at 1:30 p.m. ET. You can watch on ESPN+.
