With the conference season only three days old, the Wildcats already have a handful of painful Big Ten memories to repress: a 1-3 start, a 10-run inning for the opposition and the season’s first heartbreaker.
The Northwestern baseball team (11-16, 1-3 Big Ten) averted a conference-opening sweep at Illinois (13-12, 4-3) this weekend by salvaging the last game of the series. But the Cats left behind a start to the season they hope was more a fluke than a preview of what’s to come in the remaining 23 Big Ten games.
“I’m not happy with 1-3, but it’s very early in the season,” said pitcher Ryan Bos, the Game 4 winner. “We haven’t even gotten started with what we’re capable of doing.”
A single inning of the series illustrated what the Cats consider to be their unrealized potential in the first three games. A 10-run Illini inning in the second game handed NU a crushing 19-10 loss.
The Cats scored three runs in the top of the sixth to take a 10-9 edge on Saturday, their second lead of the game. But the tenuous advantage disappeared in the bottom of the inning.
Only six outs shy of claiming the first conference win of the season, NU pitcher Mike Nall lead off the inning by plunking a batter. He then walked the next two to load the bases before NU coach Paul Stevens finally removed him for freshman Dan Konecny.
Konecny surrendered a grand slam to the first hitter he faced. Fifteen batters after the start of the inning, the Illini had blown the game open, 19-10.
“That’s the way the game goes sometimes,” first baseman Travis Tharp said. “Everyone was just like, ‘Oh man ….’ Everything that they put in play found holes.”
Nall took a team-best 2.29 ERA into the game but left with seven walks, nine hits and 11 earned runs in only five-plus innings of work.
Nall’s outing wrecked the second-lowest ERA in the conference and threatened to send NU – losers of 10 of its last 13 games – spiraling toward the conference basement.
“Randy Johnson, some other professional players who make six, seven, eight million a season have bad outings,” Stevens said. “Mike Nall is still one of the fiercest competitors I’ve ever been around. I would never, ever bet against him.”
The game, scheduled as the first of a doubleheader Saturday, mercifully ended after seven innings. Heavy rain that started falling in the sixth inning wiped out the nightcap, necessitating a doubleheader on Sunday and giving the Cats some extra time to regroup.
After surrendering the first game of the Sunday doubleheader 7-3, NU finally combined strong pitching with Saturday’s offense to win the finale 12-5.
“It’s very important to have (the win) after dropping three,” Stevens said. “It’s even more impressive that a lot of these young kids didn’t collapse and say, ‘Hey, we’re done, that’s all there is to it.’ In the last game, we showed a heck of a lot of character and fortitude.”
The Cats belted 16 hits in the win, their best offensive output of the season.
Tharp hit a pair of home runs and catcher Joe Hietpas, who came into the weekend batting an uncharacteristically low .214, went 4-for-4, showing the form that made him the team’s leading hitter last year at .381.
NU dropped the first game on Sunday despite solid pitching from Gabe Ribas. The junior pitched all six innings and gave up only three earned runs.
But the errors that have plagued the Cats throughout the early part of the season stuck Ribas with the loss. Likewise, in the final game, NU committed three errors and left Bos with little breathing room.
“I felt a little bit more pressure than I usually would because we needed at least one win,” Bos said. “Then in the last game we started to show how well we can hit the ball.”
Friday’s pitcher, Zach Schara, didn’t benefit from the same run support.
NU didn’t plate its first run of the series until the ninth inning of Friday’s game, when it scored a pair of runs too late to fend off a 5-2 loss.
But Friday’s game was a distant memory on the bus back to Evanston, overshadowed by both Saturday’s shelling and then Sunday’s revenge.
“It was really nice to get that victory,” Tharp said. “One-and-three is a hell of a lot better than 0-4.”
