In the bottom of the ninth inning of the Northwestern baseball team’s Sunday game against Illinois, the Fighting Illini benched starting pitcher Brian Blomquist and sent Reilly Smith to the mound.
Illinois might have been hoping for a pitcher with a fresh arm, but they overlooked one key fact. The next NU batter, sophomore Chris Hayes, was a high school teammate of Smith at Lake Forest (Ill.) High School. And Smith’s stuff was anything but new to Hayes.
“I saw this guy come out from the bullpen and I thought, ‘That kind of looks like Reilly,'” Hayes said. “From playing with him all those years, I know that he throws a fastball. I was ready for it.”
Hayes pounded Smith’s first pitch to center field, scoring senior Eric Roeder for the winning run and clinching NU’s four-game sweep of Illinois with a
4-3 victory.
After entering the weekend in eighth place in the conference, NU now sits alone in third.
The 610 fans at Rocky Miller Park stood on their feet — some with brooms in hand — as the Wildcats (18-16, 10-8 Big Ten) swept their first Big Ten opponent since taking four games from Iowa in 1998. It was the first time the Cats swept Illinois (20-19, 8-12) in four-straight since 1984.
“There are no words that can explain how elated we feel,” NU coach Paul Stevens said. “It boils down to heart, and the effort this weekend really proved the character of these men.”
NU pulled off the sweep, but struggled at the beginning of game one. With two Illini runs on the board in the first inning and another two in the third, NU pitcher Dan Konecny knew he had to change something about his game.
The junior came back in the fourth without his black nylon-lycra undershirt, giving his right arm more mobility.
“For the past four weeks I’d been feeling confined,” Konecny said. “It was probably all in my head, but I felt so much better after taking that shirt off.”
The more comfortable Konecny held the Illini to four runs, and the score was 4-1 when Stanley Finch took the mound in the seventh.
NU’s bats caught fire in the eighth, as the Cats tied things up at 5-5 and forced extra innings.
In the 10th, Roeder was hit by a pitch and eventually scored, giving NU the 6-5 win.
Saturday’s doubleheader passed quickly, as sophomore J.A. Happ and freshman Dan Brauer pitched complete game victories.
Senior Travis Tharp and junior Dan Pohlman both ended hitting slumps by going deep. It was Tharp’s third home run of the season and the fifth for Pohlman.
NU’s offense, which struggled last week, cleaned up offensively. Illinois left 13 men on base during Sunday’s game — the same number NU stranded all weekend.
NU’s versatility was key. During the series, sophomore infielders Jon Mikrut and Chris Hayes both pitched, hit and played shortstop while Finch pitched and batted in the designated hitter spot.
“These guys are good at changing their hats from the mentality on the mound to the mentality at the plate,” Stevens said.
After Sunday’s game, the Cats and Illini lined up to shake hands as teams always do, and Hayes and his high school teammate Smith shared a laugh over their unusual situation.
“When I got to Reilly, he just smiled like he understood what this meant to us,” Hayes said. “This weekend was just so huge.”
