COLUMBUS, Ohio — Following Ohio State’s 5-4 win over Maryland March 28, redshirt-senior first baseman and captain Conner Pohl was leaving Bill Davis Stadium when he saw junior shortstop Zach Dezenzo taking swings off the pitching machine.

Dezenzo was coming off a weekend in which he went just 1-9 in three games at Rutgers, seeing his batting average drop over 45 points. He squared up several well-hit fly balls and made good contact, but just couldn’t get the baseball to drop in a hole.

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Dezenzo began last weekend with a 2-3 performance in Friday’s win over first-place Indiana, then knocked solo home runs in the first inning of each game during Saturday’s doubleheader. After three scoreless innings Sunday, Indiana senior shortstop Jeremy Houston laced a hard-grounder to Dezenzo in the six-hole, but the Buckeyes shortstop misplayed it, and the Hoosiers took a 1-0 lead.

He led off the bottom half of the inning with a single, but that wasn’t redemption enough. The Buckeyes rallied for two game-tying runs in the eighth, the first of which scored by Dezenzo. Then, he stepped to the plate with two outs in the bottom of the ninth, runners on first and second, tied at three.

In a 1-0 count after Hoosiers freshman right-hander John Modugno offered a slider, Dezenzo sat fastball, swung, and hammered the ball over third base. Junior third baseman Nick Erwin raced home from second base, scoring the walk-off run.

The next thing Dezenzo knew, he was getting doused with Gatorade as he and his Buckeyes teammates celebrated right there near his familiar position - shortstop.

“That’s the first time I’ve ever experienced anything like that, first walk-off, honestly, in my life,” Dezenzo said Sunday. “To do it at this level, at this great university for Buckeye Nation, even though we had limited capacity here, that was just such a great experience for me. To celebrate with those guys out there, those are my brothers, I love each and every one of them. It was just an amazing, amazing feeling. Little bit cold, but it was still awesome.”

The Alliance, Ohio, native said he had “an overwhelming sense” of the importance of the weekend series with the Hoosiers, and that he began to notice he was seeing the ball well the previous weekend in his hard-hit swings.

SUNDAY'S RECAP: Zach Dezenzo's walk-off single keys Ohio State sweep over Indiana on Easter