ANN ARBOR, Mich., — If the Northwestern baseball team wanted to salvage its weekend series at Michigan and come home with a split, the team needed a big ninth inning in the final game on Sunday.
With the Wolverines ahead 3-0, the Wildcats rallied to load the bases with only one out.
But a Michigan double play off NU junior Josh Lieberman’s ground ball ended all hopes for an NU win. The Cats scored only one run in the inning, giving the Wolverines a 3-1 game four victory and a 3-1 series edge.
“Michigan didn’t beat us, we beat ourselves,” NU coach Paul Stevens said. “The games we lost just came down to some mental mistakes.”
After this weekend’s play, NU and Michigan swapped places in the conference standings, but only a game separates the fourth-place Cats (24-20, 14-12 Big Ten) and the third-place Wolverines (28-21, 15-11).
NU senior Eric Roeder attributed this weekend’s disappointing finish to a lack of offensive output rather than defensive problems.
In Michigan’s 3-0 game two shutout of NU on Saturday, the Wolverines held the Cats to only three hits in seven innings.
But on Sunday, the problem shifted from not getting enough hits to not converting the hits into runs. NU stranded five runners in the final game.
“Our problem was that we didn’t have timely hitting,” said Roeder, who went 3-for-4 Sunday, including a sixth-inning double. “Yeah, I had three hits, but it would have been better if I was hitting with someone on base.”
In his first conference pitching start on Sunday, junior Dan Pohlman struck out four batters in a complete game.
The Cats got off to a good start in the series on Friday as senior Travis Tharp hit a home run to highlight a three-run first inning. It was his fifth longball of the season.
But NU starting pitcher Dan Konecny, who had the second-best ERA in the conference entering the weekend, was lit up for 12 hits and four earned runs in just under six innings of play.
Michigan pitcher Michael Penn didn’t allow the Cats to score the rest of the game, sealing the 9-3 Wolverines’ victory.
But there was one moment this weekend when NU did prevail in a clutch situation.
Fueled by the frustration of dropping its first two games, the Cats came back from a 3-0 deficit in game three to force extra innings.
In the extra innings, NU’s bats were on fire and the Cats scored five runs to win 8-3.
“I basically told them that if they lost, I was going to be cooking for dinner,” Stevens said. “Now nobody is going to have to know how bad of a cook I am.”
But on Sunday, as the Cats watched the Wolverines’ first baseman Mike Sokol tag Lieberman out to finalize the Michigan victory, their hopes were dashed and their faces fell. The Cats felt they had let one slip away.
The NU players congratulated their opponents as usual, but spent an unusually long time being lectured in the dugout. But coach Stevens has said all season that his “blue-collar” players are their own worst critics.
“I’m not going to put too much pressure on these guys,” Stevens said. “I don’t have to tell them how important Indiana’s going to be.”
The unsuccessful road trip reminds the Cats of their 3-1 series loss at Penn State in April.
While Konecny said that ride home was the worst of his life, his teammates said they’re not as devastated about the trip home from Michigan.
“We can take more positives from this series,” Pohlman said. “At least this time we know we’re a good team, and we know we played reasonably well. This time, we’re psychologically okay.”
