For those fans who suffered through Saturday’s doubleheader against Penn State, Tuesday’s storyline was all too familiar, as Northwestern bumbled its way to a 6-3 defeat at UIC.
With the exception of one inning, the Wildcats actually outplayed the Flames, but that one frame was enough to sink NU’s chances.
The Cats’ difficulties began when Flames catcher Jacob McNamara launched an innocent-looking base knock to right-center field. The problem was that right fielder Chris Kontos failed to anticipate the high bounce off the artificial turf at Les Miller Field, as the ball bounced high over his head before banging up against the fence.
“It just comes on you so much faster,” second baseman Kyle Ruchim said. “The hops are almost too true. You expect a little more bounce or maybe for it to slow up or take a bad hop here and there and it just doesn’t happen. That’s why, at least in the infield, you struggle a little more just because it gets on you so much faster.”
After McNamara’s hit, sophomore pitcher Jack Havey began to let the game slip away from him on the mound. After issuing a walk to UIC right fielder Josh Nevers, he got second baseman John Coen to hit a soft ground ball right back to him. It should have been a double play. Instead, Havey fired wide to second base, forcing junior shortstop Trevor Stevens off the bag and ruining the play.
Rather than the inning being over, the Flames had runners on first and second with a run already home. That one run would quickly turn into a six-run rally, much to Ruchim’s chagrin.
“I was actually talking with Trevor Stevens at short and I was saying it’s so easy when things aren’t going well for one inning for you to mentally relieve yourself of the pressure and just kind of not focus on it,” Ruchim said. “The biggest thing was that we kind of let up a little bit. That inning very easily could have been two or three runs. You have an error there and make it six. That was the biggest setback for us in this game.”
Havey was removed after completing the disastrous second inning. He left having surrendered six runs on four hits, three walks and two hit batters. Only one of his runs was earned, but then again it was Havey who made the critical error of the frame.
“Walks, hit batsmen, come backers, passed balls,” coach Paul Stevens said. “Bases loaded. Base hit to left field and three guys score. That’s a bad inning, that’s a real bad inning. But you can’t sit there and put that many people on base just free of charge and think you’re going to win some ballgames.”
While Havey struggled for the duration of his time on the mound, NU’s other pitchers performed admirably in relief. Ruchim, Dan Tyson, Matt Gailey, and Jack Quigley combined to put up six zeros, keeping the Cats in the game.
Slowly but surely, NU took advantage, chipping away at UIC’s substantial lead.
In the top of the fourth, junior first baseman Paul Snieder led off the frame with a double, and after senior third baseman Chris Lashmet flew out to center, Havey blooped a hit into short center field, putting the Cats on the scoreboard. NU could have drawn closer, but junior catcher Geoff Rowan grounded out with the bases loaded to end the inning.
The Cats continued to fight back. After taking another run off the Flames’ lead in the top of the fifth, they went back to work before the seventh-inning stretch, bringing home a run on a Lashmet single.
Once again, NU wasn’t able to get the big hit, as Kontos popped a high fly ball to the center fielder to end the rally, with the Cats still trailing 6-3.
“We can talk all we want; it’s just finding a way to get it done,” Stevens said. “What we have to do is we have to have one person punch a hole in the ice because it seems that once you crack that ice, there are a whole lot of really good things underneath it that come pouring out. Right now we’ve got to just find someone to get that big base hit for us that opens those floodgates.”
