No one can blame Northwestern if it’s looking ahead to its Big Ten finale this weekend.
With Western Michigan (23-23) coming to Evanston today for the Wildcats’ last home game, NU might be thinking more about its showdown against Indiana. With the Cats at fourth place in the conference and the Hoosiers in fifth, their four-game series will be laden with playoff implications.
But the Cats insist they have business to take care of in the meantime.
“We’re just going to play baseball like we always do,” NU coach Paul Stevens said. “We have to get ourselves in gear for this weekend.”
However meaningless this game seems given the current Big Ten standings, the matchup gives NU the opportunity to recover from last weekend while making whatever adjustments necessary for the Hoosiers.
NU (24-20, 14-12 Big Ten) is coming off a tough weekend trip to Ann Arbor, Mich., where the Wolverines took three of four games. But Stevens said it was a series that easily could have gone the other way.
“One base hit here and a ground ball there and it all changes,” Stevens said. “We’re not going to sit here and say we had a bad weekend. These guys have been playing so well lately and everyone knows it.”
The players aren’t about to admit that the weekend went poorly either, insisting that what happened in Ann Arbor must be forgotten.
“We want to finish strong and get that first-round bye (in the Big Ten tournament),” senior catcher Ken Padgett said. “We need to start picking each other up like we have been doing all season.”
In order for the Cats to get that first-round pass, they’ll have to jump ahead of third-place Michigan and second-place Ohio State in the final weekend.
But that will require generating some offensive momentum — something the Cats struggled with against the Wolverines.
“Hitting’s contagious,” Padgett said. “Once one guy hits, another guy hits, then everything starts going your way.”
NU will have a chance to muster some offensive confidence against Western Michigan, but it shouldn’t expect a walk in the park.
The Broncos come in with a 4-1 record against Big Ten teams this season, having defeated Michigan twice and Michigan State once — teams the Cats have a combined 2-4 record against.
But NU can’t afford to concern itself with Western Michigan’s Big Ten dominance.
“Bottom line for this game is that I’m not going too high or too low,” Stevens said. “All I’m looking at is being fully ready to go to Minnesota next weekend (for the Big Ten tournament).”
In the meantime, the Cats have their final home game to play — the last at Rocky Miller Park for the team’s five seniors.
Stevens said he’ll start seniors Brandon Ackley, Travis Tharp and Ken Padgett as he usually does. But Eric Roeder, who normally sits out midweek games, will get the day off.
But as Senior Day was officially observed in last weekend’s conference series against Iowa, Stevens said the time to be sentimental is over.
“I don’t think the seniors are going to be thinking of anything else except about kicking some team’s backside,” Stevens said.
