What seemed like a perfect pitch in a perfect location turned out to be a summation of another sweep of Northwestern.
With two outs and two strikes on Minnesota’s Nick O’Shea in the bottom of the seventh inning of Sunday’s game, Wildcats sophomore pitcher Cole Livermore saw a 4-3 NU lead vanish. O’Shea smacked a three-run home run, ultimately giving the No. 30 Golden Gophers a 6-4 victory to cap off a three-game sweep.
“We just got unlucky again,” sophomore third baseman Chris Lashmet said. “They hit a good pitch, a slider down and away, for a game-winning home run. It just seems like this keeps happening.”
The Cats (7-23, 1-7 Big Ten) were victims of yet another come-from-behind victory on Friday, allowing Minnesota to scrape together four runs in the seventh inning, and a 5-4 win.
“We jump out to an early lead, but our bats go cold,” senior shortstop Tommy Finn said. “We’ve got to keep scoring and putting pressure on them, and keep eating away a couple of runs. Once we usually get four runs, we just hit a wall. We didn’t have that urgency, but we have to tell ourselves that the game’s not over.”
NU was within reach for most of Saturday’s game. The Cats trailed 2-1 heading into the sixth inning, but insurance runs in the sixth, seventh and eighth innings helped the Golden Gophers (20-10, 6-2) pull ahead for a 5-1 win.
“The first and the third game, we had leads,” coach Paul Stevens said. “Our pitching and defense did their jobs, because we had leads in both those games. But we just couldn’t find a way to hold on. We can’t put people on base and not get big hits.”
Sophomore pitcher Eric Jokisch was given a solid 3-1 lead heading into the seventh inning of the first game and was pitching well enough through six innings to receive a victory. But a two-run home run and two RBI singles blew open the game and cost NU a chance for victory. An eighth-inning home run by junior outfielder Jake Goebbert narrowed the lead to 5-4. But the Cats left the tying runner on base, as they could not get the ever-elusive two-out hit.
“No one is happy saying we hung around with them,” Finn said. “Everyone on this team believes we can win, but it just didn’t happen. Too many times we have said this season, ‘We stuck around with this team,’ and it just doesn’t translate into wins.”
In all three of the games against Minnesota this weekend, NU was leading or within one run heading into the sixth inning. The case was the same in all five of the team’s past Big Ten matchups, against Purdue and Michigan State. The Cats won only one of those five games. Closing out games and limiting late inning rallies has deterred NU all season.
“We stacked up very well with Minnesota,” Lashmet said. “We stack up well with every team, but we are not catching any breaks. Every time we’re up in the seventh inning, we end up losing the lead. We know we can play with everyone, because we’re dominating the game until the last couple frames. It’s very frustrating.”
The Cats will have a chance to amend their weekend woes against Notre Dame on Wednesday at 7 p.m. as they play at U.S. Cellular Field, home of the Chicago White Sox.
