By Jake SimpsonThe Daily Northwestern
After a two-hour rain delay Sunday, freshman pitcher Joe Muraski took the hill for Northwestern against Michigan, trying to protect a 1-0 lead.
One pitch later, the lead was gone.
Muraski surrendered a first-pitch longball to Michigan’s Doug Pickens, and the Wolverines tacked on four more runs in the inning on their way to a 14-7 victory.
Muraski’s meltdown was a microcosm of the Wildcats’ weekend. NU led in three of its four contests against the defending Big Ten champions but eventually fell in each.
Despite the 0-4 weekend, NU coach Paul Stevens said he was heartened by the team’s early-inning success.
“Losing all four games is a disappointment,” Stevens said, “but I saw some very good things from some players, especially our starting pitchers.”
Before the steady drizzle stopped Sunday’s game in the fourth inning, the Cats held a 1-0 lead behind Muraski’s strong pitching. The freshman hurler held the Wolverines scoreless and allowed only one hit.
“I just sit there and want to give (Muraski) all the kudos I can,” Stevens said. “He did a great job for us.”
NU (6-15, 0-4 Big Ten) took the lead in the second on second baseman Tommy Finn’s RBI groundout.
The Cats appeared to be headed for their first win of the series after dropping the first three games by a combined score of 25-8.
On Friday, Michigan ace Zach Putnam, Baseball America’s projected Big Ten player of the year, cooled NU’s torrid bats. Overpowered by Putnam’s dominating fastball, the Cats scored fewer than two runs for the first time all season, managing only a Jake Owens home run in a 7-1 loss.
Owens, who finished 1 for 4 with an RBI, attributed the Cats’ anemic bats to the Michigan ace.
“(Putnam) is a good pitcher,” Owens said. “He’s not going to shut us down every day, but today you’ve got to give him a lot of credit.”
NU starter Cole Livermore held Michigan (15-6, 4-0 Big Ten) scoreless through the first six innings but tired late in the game. In what would become a recurring nightmare for NU in the series, Michigan’s offense exploded late in the game, scoring all seven of its runs in the last four innings.
“They just started hitting my pitches,” Livermore said. “As the game went on, they figured out what I was throwing and started knocking me around.”
For the second Saturday in a row, NU, in the immortal words of Cubs’ icon Ernie Banks, “played two.” This weekend, however, the Cats were on the short end of a doubleheader sweep.
The Cats fell 7-4 in the first game after staging a frantic last-inning rally, one that ended when junior Antonio Mul
