Northwestern Baseball Puts Up a Fight Against Top-Five Big Ten Team
The Washington Huskies came to town this weekend to take on Northwestern at Rocky and Berenice Miller Park. Washington is currently 13-8 in conference, good enough for fifth place in the Big Ten standings, so it was a tough matchup for the 'Cats.
Early on in the series, the talent gap was on full display. But, as the weekend progressed, Northwestern started to defend its home turf.
Game one was a blowout of epic proportions, though. The Wildcats were completely dismantled on Friday, falling by a score of 19-4 in seven innings. Northwestern sent six pitchers to the mound over the course of the game, but nobody could stop the Huskies.
Offensively, Ryan Kucherak and Owen McElfatrick both hit bombs for Northwestern, but the entire game was essentially garbage time. The pitching simply wasn't good enough to give the lineup a chance to come back.
Game two was similar, but not quite as poor of a showing from the home team. Once again, the pitching failed to keep Northwestern in the game. Starter Sam Hliboki allowed eight earned runs in 4.2 innings pitched.
On offense, the 'Cats were able to push four runs accross the plate once again, one of them coming on a Jack Lausch homer, but they weren't given a real shot to mount a comeback. This time, Northwestern lost 14-4 in seven innings.
It was game three when the 'Cats finally turned things around and benefited from some good pitching. Christian Forniss, Matthew Kouser and Crawford Wade combined to allow just four runs in the game, giving the offense a chance to do some meaningful damage.
And it did just that. After scrounging for a couple runs in the first two innings, Kucherak launched his second homer of the series to give the 'Cats a 4-0 lead in the third inning. From there, they never looked back and held the lead until the final out.
When it was all said and done, NU had dodged the sweep with an impressive 10-4 win against a Huskies squad that looked like world beaters earlier in the series. With the win, the Wildcats improved to 19-22 overall and 9-12 in the Big Ten.
Looking ahead, Northwestern will take on Butler at home later today before heading to Purdue next weekend for a series.
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Ryan Cole is a writer for Northwestern Wildcats On SI covering every team on campus. He’s currently a junior at NU where he’s studying journalism and previously wrote and edited for Inside NU. He also studies business with an eye towards eventually helping develop business models to revive local news. In his free time, Cole enjoys watching sports, playing sports, reading the news and singing.