The Northwestern baseball team schedules those midweek nonconference games – games against Division II squads like Chicago State and Wisconsin-Milwaukee, games void of any playoff implications – for a reason.

Usually they serve as a tune-up, an extra round of practice against lighter hitting for one lucky starter, or a spot start for a rookie designed to align the team’s best pitchers for the weekend Big Ten series.

But those games take on an added meaning when the Wildcats are 1-7 in the conference – they offer the opportunity to inject a few wins into a slumping team. Coming off of a weekend sweep at the hands of visiting Purdue in the second series of Big Ten play, there’s nothing the Cats (12-20) need more than to pick up a win today against Valparaiso (13-12) before Indiana travels to Evanston on Friday.

But NU pitcher Gabe Ribas doesn’t see the Crusaders as cream puffs.

“As soon as you start to take someone lightly, as soon as you look at someone like they’re going to help you regroup, they’re going to beat you,” Ribas said.

Cats coach Paul Stevens is even throwing one of his best pitchers at Valparaiso.

Mike Nall, NU’s lone starter to fend off a Purdue shelling this weekend, will be on the mound. The righty threw a complete game against the Boilermakers on Friday, striking out eight and giving up only a pair of earned runs.

Another complete game from Nall today would relieve an exhausted Cats bullpen. Nall was the only NU hurler over the weekend to last more than 5 1/3 innings, as Purdue repeatedly brought out the worst in the Cats’ starters.

The same trio of NU relievers was forced to pitch in both ends of Saturday’s doubleheader, and freshman Dan Konecny had to throw four innings of relief Sunday.

“I don’t know who else could have gone out there (Sunday),” Stevens said. “We’ve got to use everybody because we don’t have a huge staff. We’ve got nine guys out there and our starters are throwing a lot of pitches.”

For the second week in a row, Stevens is using a four-man rotation, relying only on the four upperclassmen who distinguished themselves before the start of the conference season.

Nall, returning to the schedule of three day’s rest he saw two years ago in junior college, has an immediate opportunity to pick up his team and avenge the outing he lost Friday despite strong pitching.

“That’s the nice thing about baseball: You play 162 games in the bigs, 56 here – you get to bounce back right away when you have a bad day or a bad weekend,” Nall said.

The three-day-rest strategy seemed to work well last week for Zach Schara, who pitched against Valparaiso in Indiana. Schara notched a win for his, splitting up what was a disappointing conference-opening series in Illinois and this weekend’s sweep.

While Ribas hesitates to disregard Valparaiso relative to Big Ten competition, past experience at least suggests that the Cats are capable of handling the Crusaders.

In last week’s meeting, Valparaiso botched a number of plays in the field, a feat NU has been guilty of in Big Ten games. The Cats scored six unearned runs to win 10-5.

But while last week’s game didn’t exactly prove to be a “bounce-back” win with far-reaching potential, the Cats hope a win today will carry them back into conference play rejuvenated.

“We can just as easily turn it around as we did dig a hole,” NU catcher Joe Hietpas said. “It’s time for a gut check, but we’re not at all in a bad situation.”