COLUMBUS — Michigan softball’s first baseman Dorian Shaw stepped out of the batter’s box between pitches in the fourth inning.

Her team was down 3-1 in the first game of a doubleheader against its fiercest rival — No. 19 Ohio State (10-2 Big Ten, 31-12 overall). It was the first time the Wolverines had faced a deficit since they lost in mid-March to then-No. 15 Texas.

The situation was an uniquely clutch one for Shaw.

With senior catcher Roya St. Clair on first, she could tie it up with one swing of the bat. And as she stepped back to the plate with the 3-1 pitch on the way, she knew she’d see a ball in her wheelhouse that she could drive over the relatively short left field fence of Buckeye Field.

Seconds later, Shaw was in her home run trot. She skied a ball deep into left, and the Michigan crowd bunched along the first baseline rose to its feet.

But as the ball hung in the air, Buckeye left fielder Dee Dee Hillman, with her left hand feeling for the wall, settled under it on the warning track to make the grab.

It was a long out that epitomized the team’s first Big Ten loss of the season, as the Wolverines fell to the Buckeyes, 5-3. With near miss after near miss, the middle of the lineup fell just short of producing the runs that would bail out junior pitcher Jordan Taylor from her sub-par performance on the mound.

“It’s hard to not get frustrated, but you just have to kind of understand that we’re hitting the ball hard and they’re going to fall,” Shaw said. “You kind of have to keep that mentality. And even if they don’t, that’s just how it goes sometimes.”

The second through eighth hitters of the lineup, who recorded just one hit (a line-drive single off the bat of Shaw), served up hard-hit groundballs that never found the outfield, line drives that Ohio State outfielders barely had to lift their feet for and occasionally long fly balls that were barely kept in the field of play.

Maybe Michigan coach Carol Hutchins should just tip her hat to the Buckeye defense — Ohio State pitcher Melanie Nichols allowed four hits to two strikeouts over her seven innings of work in the first game.

“They play a real deep defense,” Hutchins said. “So it hurts some of the time, but a lot of things were going their way. And we didn’t make much go our way.”

Knowing the “one-pitch softball” mantra that Hutchins instills in her players, the team won't harp on the loss for too long. Come Friday night when Michigan takes on Kentucky, its first SEC opponent in nearly two months, the Wolverine batters will have long-forgotten their struggles in Columbus.

But in the end, the loss proved the mortality of Michigan’s offense — even a lineup that features some of the most prolific hitters in the nation can meet its match.

Coming into Wednesday’s doubleheader, the lineup averaged 10 runs a game through the first 13 matchups of Big Ten play. But the Wolverines could only muster seven in the 14 innings they played against Ohio State.

In some respects, the loss could serve as a needed wake-up call for the Michigan’s offense. After all, it had been over a month since the team faced a quality opponent that it could potentially meet deep into postseason.

“I think that, at this time, this is really good for us because having the weeks go as they did, we kind of got a little complacent,” Shaw said. “You know, you can’t go into the NCAA tournament thinking that, because somebody’s going to slap you right in the face with that kind of mentality.”

Instead, Michigan’s slap-in-the-face moment came a few weeks prior to the start of the NCAA Regionals, in Columbus.