Sixteen strikeouts weren’t enough for the Flashes as the Kent State baseball team lost to Canisius College 5-4 on Wednesday afternoon.

Coming off of a dominant pitching performance from Connor Wollersheim in Tuesday’s 8-3 win over Ohio State, the Flashes would have to look at another freshman in Joey Murray to keep the trend of great starting pitching going.

Murray went into the ball-game looking to improve on his 10.32 ERA and bounce back from a less than stellar start last week against Pitt, and he did.

The freshman lefty struck out the first nine batters of the game making Wednesday’s win his best outing of the season.

A one hour and thirteen-minute rain-delay before the fifth would cut Murray’s great day short with his final line standing at four scoreless innings, striking out 10 batters.

“He threw strikes today and got ahead of hitters” manager Jeff Duncan said. “We were just okay out of the bullpen today.”

Because of that bullpen Joey Murray’s mammoth start would go to the wayside as the Flashes pen allowed the Golden Griffins to eventually overcome a four-run deficit thanks to numerous walks and a couple errors along the way.

It seemed as if the rain delay had an opposite effect for each team as the Canisius line-up was able to get men on-base while never letting up throughout the rest of the game while the Flashes were only able to scratch off two more hits after the fourth.

Kent State looked lost out there against the Golden Griffins with numerous batters going up to the plate swinging at junk and not putting together good at-bats, not to downplay the Canisius pitching,

After an eight run game on Tuesday, four runs thanks to one hit was not exactly what the Flashes had in mind coming into today.

“We’ve got to be able to bring it everyday” Jeff Duncan said. “It has to do with focus … we can’t just come out here and just think we’re going to win.”

Kent State will have to shake off the loss as they’ll start a three game set against the lowly Toledo Rockets on Friday.

Toledo will drive into Schoonover Stadium with a 5-23-1 record with almost half of those wins coming in conference.

For Kent State it’ll be ace Eric Lauer, who will look to bounce back after picking up a loss Friday against Western Michigan giving up three runs on five hits with only one of the runs being earned.

On the season Lauer comes in with a 1.19 ERA who averages a little more than a strikeout per inning.

First pitch will be at 6pm in Kent.

Zach Harley is a sports reporter for The Kent Stater. Contact him at [email protected].