With Northwestern down 7-0 to Cornell in the second game of a seven-game trip to Bradenton, Fla., sophomore pitcher Ryan Meyers came in as a reliever and pitched seven and two-thirds scoreless innings.
The result for the lengthy relief appearance was a ‘Louisville Slugger’ National Player of the Week award.
“I was surprised,” Meyers said. “It’s good to be recognized every once in a while.”
Meyers (2-1) relieved sophomore pitcher George Kontos (3-1) with one out in the second inning and struck out the first six batters he faced. He fanned a career-high 15 batters, including eight of the first 10 he faced, in an 8-7 NU win March 20.
Meyer’s 15 strikeouts were the most for an NU hurler since J.A. Happ fanned 16 batters against Iowa on May 3, 2003.
“I could throw a fastball or curveball over the plate pretty much whenever I wanted to,” Meyers said. “And sometimes I got lucky. It was a good day.”
The Wildcats (9-8) won five of seven games on the trip, with four of the games decided by two or fewer runs — the Cats were 3-1 in those outings.
NU began the trip with an 18-2 win over St. Francis (NY) on March 19 behind 16 hits and a eight-inning performance by sophomore pitcher Andrew Smith (1-3).
Smith allowed a run in both the first and second innings before keeping St. Francis (1-9) off the board for the next six.
Sophomore shortstop Caleb Fields led the Cats offensively, going 3 for 4 and driving in four runs.
The Cats lost 5-1 to Kent State (13-8) on March 21 in their third game in three days of action.
NU scored first on an RBI triple by senior shortstop Jon Mikrut in the first inning. Senior pitcher Evan Blesoff (2-3) held Kent State scoreless until the seventh inning, when he gave up four runs which the Cats could not match.
“I think we did really well,” Meyers said of the pitching staff’s performance during the trip. “We had a couple of rough outings, but for the most part we kept our team in the game.”
After taking a couple of days off, NU faced Ivy League preseason favorite Dartmouth (3-6) in a two-game series spanning Thursday and Saturday. The Cats swept Dartmouth, winning the first game 3-2 and the second 11-6.
Kontos got the win in game one and senior pitcher Chris Hayes saved both.
In their three-game series against the Big Green last season, the Cats dropped two of three.
Sandwiched between the Dartmouth games, NU played a double-header against Vermont (7-3-1) on Friday.
The Cats fell 3-1 in the first game but came back with a 4-3 win in the afternoon matchup.
Smith pitched a complete game for the Cats in game one. He gave up just three runs, only one of which was earned, in the loss. Junior first baseman Mark Ori had two of the five NU hits and had the only RBI for the Cats.
“We’re really inconsistent right now, which is not a good thing,” Ori said. “But hopefully we’ll turn it around in the Big Tens.”
NU was down 3-1 in the seventh and final inning of game two, but after getting two runs to tie the game at 3-3, Mikrut hit a game-winning single to center field to plate the much-needed run.
“I think we probably could have won one out of two (games we lost) for sure,” Ori said. “But we came back in the Cornell game when we were down seven runs. We could have lost that game too.”
Reach Abe Rakov at [email protected].
