It’s common sense: Keep playing with fire and you’ll get burned.
The Northwestern softball team allowed the leadoff batter to reach base in four of six innings during Sunday’s nightcap against No. 25 Ohio State at Sharon J. Drysdale Field.
And the Wildcats almost got away with it.
With the game tied at one, Ohio State’s Sarah West singled home the go-ahead run after Wendy Allen led off the bottom of the sixth inning with a double. The Buckeyes (38-9, 9-3 Big Ten) went on to triumph 3-1 and complete a doubleheader sweep of the Cats (17-12-1, 6-4) in Evanston. The loss completed a 1-3 weekend for NU.
Ohio State put its leadoff hitter on base in the first, fourth, fifth and sixth innings. But the Buckeyes got all the runs they needed by scoring in the first and sixth.
“The first out of the inning is huge,” NU coach Kate Drohan said. “But I liked how Brie Brown battled and made some great outs after she let the first runner on.”
Added junior pitcher Lauren Schwendimann: “(The first out) is mega-important, but (Brown) did a good job after the leadoff man.”
Brown turned in a solid performance on Sunday, scattering six hits and allowing three runs against one of the more potent offenses in the Big Ten. But the rest of her weekend wasn’t as impressive.
Brown lasted only one-third of an inning in Saturday’s 9-3 loss to Penn State.
The Nittany Lions came out of the gate swinging, scoring eight runs in the first two innings.
The loss was a drastic turn for the Cats, who opened the weekend blanking Penn State 5-0 on Friday. The game was preceded by a ceremony honoring former coach Sharon Drysdale, who stepped away as NU’s coach last year after 23 seasons with the Cats.
In Friday’s contest Schwendimann picked up her fourth complete game shutout of the year. She dominated the Lady Lions, striking out nine and yielding only three hits.
Sophomore shortstop Carri Leto gave the Cats more than enough offense, going 3-for-3 with three doubles.
Another bright spot for NU was its defense. The Cats committed only one error the whole weekend after struggling in the field at the beginning of the season. NU has committed only two errors in its last six games.
But this weekend, it was the Cats’ pitching that wasn’t cooperating.
The low point of the four games was Ohio State’s 12-4 spanking of the Cats in Game 1 of Sunday’s doubleheader. Heading into the sixth inning with a 5-2 lead, the Buckeyes put the exclamation mark on their victory by scoring seven runs.
“Any time you give up seven runs in an inning, you’re going to get frustrated,” Drohan said. “The ball was just flying out there. They hit everything we threw at them.”
Schwendimann, who gave up nine runs and 14 hits in five-plus innings, didn’t have much of an explanation for what happened.
“I was putting the ball where I wanted it to be,” Schwendimann said. “Ohio State is just a really good hitting team.”
Junior Brett Nakabayashi, who went 3-for-4 in Saturday’s game against Penn State, put a more positive spin on the weekend.
“We’re obviously all disappointed,” Nakabayashi said. “But we can also make it motivating.”
With the three consecutive losses, NU is in the midst of its longest losing streak of the season.
“We just have to go from being a good team to a great team,” Drohan said. “I told them to just forget about (the losses) because nothing we do now can change what just happened.
“It hurts. But I want it to hurt.”
