An old baseball adage says winning games boils down to pitching and playing defense. Northwestern’s mixed weekend series against conference foe Ohio State proved the saying correct.

Going into the series having averaged more than two errors per game over their first 24 contests, the Wildcats (7-20, 1-2 Big Ten) knew it would be important to get their defensive play under control against the conference’s best team.

NU didn’t commit any errors Friday, but it allowed 11 runs in the loss. The Cats struggled offensively against the Buckeyes’ ace Alex Wimmers, scoring one run on six hits against the righty. Sunday the Cats made four errors and again allowed 11 runs in a five-run loss.

On Saturday, though, the team’s pitching and defensive play struck a perfect balance, and NU earned its only win of the weekend, 8-2.

In that victory junior third baseman Chris Lashmet, who led the team in errors last season with 18, didn’t commit any miscues. He made several solid plays, cleanly fielding four ground balls and catching an infield pop-up. Sophomore first baseman Paul Snieder earned put-outs on seven throws from fellow infielders and flashed the leather on several occassions.

Coach Paul Stevens compared Snieder’s to the ultra-flexible cartoon character ‘Gumby.’

“Holy cow, he was making plays over here like he was Keith Hernandez, Gold Glove for about 90,000 years,” Stevens said. “Sniedley had a pretty good day defensively over here.”

Snieder also did what Stevens said the sophomore does best-close the ballgame.

Stevens used one word to describe Snieder’s slider: “Wicked.”

That breaking ball complemented junior starter Eric Jokisch’s best outing since he faced Notre Dame last season at U.S. Cellular Field, where he allowed no runs on four hits in five innings. Jokisch let up only two earned runs in eight innings Saturday, while striking out two and allowing four walks.

“He kept them off-balance,” Stevens said. “And when you keep people off-balance, movement and location are going to create issues. That’s exactly what happened today.”

At the plate, sophomore rightfielder Chris Kontos collected a career high four hits, including a double to score freshman designated hitter Colby Everett.

“Coach has really stressed with runners in scoring position just to put the ball in play,” Kontos said. “We had a lot of guys swing in early counts. … It’s way easier for the ball to find a hole on the ground than it is if you put it up in the air. We did that real well.”

In fact, the Cats found holes so well that most of the team’s 14 hits Saturday were seeing-eye singles they strung together to produce runs.

Some of the singles NU notched on the weekend were bunts the Cats squeezed out to put the ball in play. While some missed bunts cost the Cats run-scoring opportunities early in the series, sophomore leftfielder Geoff Rowan put down a bunt in the third inning Sunday, and an Ohio State error allowed NU to plate two runs. In the eighth inning of the same game, freshman centerfielder Arby Fields successfully bunted to reach base.

“It puts pressure on people to make a play,” said Stevens about the importance of bunts. “When you execute them well, they put you in a position to score runs.”

Senior Chad Noble made a reappearance at catcher this weekend after spending much of the team’s Spring Break trip in the dugout with a dislocated finger on his throwing hand. Noble caught a runner stealing Saturday and started a double play in the second inning of Sunday’s matchup, where he caught a pop-up and then threw a runner out at second.

“It’s always good to get those two outs,” Noble said. “That’s the difference between them having a big inning and us trying to shut it down.”

The Cats’ series against the best team in the conference showed NU that it has the ability to “shut it down.” Stevens said this weekend came down to needing to scoremore key runs, instead of spreading singles out across the board.

For the team, its 1-2 conference record gives it confidence it might not have had before its conference matchup against Penn State next weekend. Expectations? Noble answered: “We think we can take all three.”[email protected]